Tourism and Environment Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Traveling to distant places and lands has been a human activity since people first began to spread over the earth. However, there has always been a difference between visiting, inspections, migrations, business trips, scientific expeditions, pilgrimages, and tourism.

The great improvements in transportation in the 19th century opened the way for enormous numbers of people to go on tours around Europe and beyond for recreation such as visiting spas, or other leisure purposes. At first, touring was affordable mainly to the gentry, but with rising levels of prosperity members of the emerging middle class went touring.

Before World War II, most touring was of the United States, Canada, or in Europe west of the Danube. In the United States and Canada a great deal of tourism was by private automobile. After the war, increasing numbers of people traveled from frigid winters in the north to winter in Florida with an inevitable ecological impact.

Much of the postwar tourism was to Europe by cruise ships, until the advent of trans-Atlantic and then global passenger air travel made almost any place in the world accessible in just a matter of hours. The boom in the mass tourism industry since 1945 has had a significant impact on tourist sites, both historic and natural. Today, from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia or from Alaska to Antarctica, masses of tourists travel over the globe in search of leisure, recreation, or educational experiences. Companies compete for tourist dollars by advertising travel to almost any place in the world at an affordable price for most people. Cruise ships ply the Mediterranean, Baltic, and Caribbean Seas, as well as other waters.

Ecotourism

So voluminous has the tourist trade become that “ecotourism” has developed as a form of tourism. Ecotourism or ecological tourism seeks to give travelers on nature tours experiences of nature that do not harm the environment. The goal is to create a benign, sustainable tourism.

Ecotourism may seek volunteers to be part of scientific research on natural areas. It usually takes tourists to places where the cultural heritage or fauna and flora are the main attraction. This may mean being paddled by expert boatmen in bancas (traditional dugout canoes) up the Bumbungan River to the Pagsanjan (Magdapio) Falls on southern Luzon island, the Philippines. Or it may mean touring Palawan Island in the Philippines for the rich diversity of species that can be found there.

Ecotourism to Costa Rica features tours that present the extremely rich environment of Costa Rica, which can include tours of active volcanoes. Tourism of the volcanoes in Hawaii and well as of some of the numerous ecological areas in the islands is oriented toward preserving the unique ecosystem.

In the case of wilderness adventures, ecotourism may mean hiking with backpacks or riding horseback into remote areas of the Rocky Mountains or other wild areas of the world. The number of people visiting such areas has grown tremendously and shows no signs of leveling off.

Many of these wilderness adventures may stress personal growth; others may teach new ways to live in harmony with nature. Or they may focus on local cultures or volunteering to preserve areas of cultural or natural interest. Always these programs seek to minimize the impact of traditional tourism. They also seek to protect or encourage the preservation of local cultural heritage areas. To minimize adverse effects on the environment or the traditional culture, the touring program is designed to minimize the impact of the visitors.

To design an ecologically friendly touring program requires an evaluation of the natural environment and the cultural heritage area of the local people. The goal is to ensure hospitality providers have means for recycling and efficient use of water and energy, while creating economic opportunities for local people. Conservation practices that preserve both biological and cultural diversity must be implemented. Sustainability must be sought to prevent heritage or habitat destruction. The jobs created must include jobs for indigenous people; their input is also absolutely necessary and their participation in the management of tourism is essential.

To achieve these goals, the focus is put upon sustainable activities. For example, ecotourism is an issue in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania which are little changed since the Middle Ages. The region is still filled with bears, bison, lynx, wolves, and a variety of other wildlife. A program backed by the United Nations is seeking to promote sustainable tourism there. Balea Lac, Romania, is the site of a wintertime “ice hotel.” High in the mountains, it can be reached only by cable car. The cost of building it is low and it melts away in the spring; yet it attracts those willing to pay for a sustainable adventure.

Globally, there are efforts underway to define and describe ways to create environmental tourism for the sake of the planet and for future generations. The use of environmental certificates is probably not sufficient because some tours are to extremely sensitive areas. Some tour companies treat ecotourism as a marketing tool, or as some critics call it, “green-washing.” Other critics have pointed out that putting a magnificent hotel in a beautiful landscape does not qualify as environmental tourism; in fact it is just the opposite.

Environmental Impacts of Tourism

Humans can have an enormous environmental impact even outside of extremely sensitive areas. In some places the ecological impact of great numbers of people can be very serious. The influx of tourists to Zion Canyon in Utah’s Zion National Park frightened away its population of mountain lions. This allowed the deer population to explode; deer browsing on a great number of plants led to the destruction of cottonwood seedlings. This affected a great many species, including toads and butterflies, in a “trophic cascade” in which most species disappeared. Comparison with nearby areas where humans normally do not go and where mountain lions still prowl showed a balanced ecology.

Tourism has been economically profitable to many areas of the world. The income earned from tourist visits has in many areas provided incentives for developing, managing, and preserving tourist sites. Tourism to environmentally sensitive areas such as the coral reefs in the Florida Keys grows, but so does local concern for protecting such vital resources.

Many nations are now seeing environmental tourism as essential for the preservation of tourist income. In many places tourism is first, second, or third in income generation for a nation’s gross domestic product.

Bibliography:

Brian Garrod and Julie C. Wilson, Marine Ecotourism: Issues and Experiences (Multilingual Matters , 2003);
Andrew Holden, Environment and Tourism (Taylor & Francis, 2000);
Stephen Page and Ross Dowling, Ecotourism (Longman Group, 2001);
Joseph L. Scarpaci, Plazas and Barrios: Heritage Tourism and Globalization in the Latin American Centro (University of Arizona Press, 2004);
Hellen Vriassoulis and Jan van der Straaten, eds., Tourism and the Environment: Regional, Economic, Cultural, and Policy Issues (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999).