Tourism, Environment and Sustainability (original) (raw)

Tourism and environment

2011

Tourism is a large, diffuse global industry. Environmental aspects are little studied, with ∼1,500 publications in total. Impacts range from global contributions to climate change and ocean pollution to localized effects on endangered plant and animal species in protected areas. Environmental management is limited more by lack of adoption than by lack of technology. Government regulation is more effective than industrybased ecocertification. In developing nations, tourism can contribute to conservation by providing political and financial support for public protected area agencies and for conservation on private and communally owned lands. This is important in building resilience to climate change. In developed nations, such effects are outweighed by the impacts of recreational use and by political pressures from tourism property developers. These interactions deserve research in both natural and social sciences. Research priorities include more sophisticated recreation ecology as well as legal and social frameworks for conservation tourism.

Tourism and protected areas: motives, actors and processes

International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystems Services & Management, 2006

SUMMARY Following the paradigm shift in nature conservation policy towards the inclusion of local inhabitants in the planning and management of protected areas, tourism is emphasised as a means to achieve economic development in peripheral areas. Governance issues and the real impacts from tourism on development are thus often under scrutiny. This article focuses on the role of tourism in