Preventing environmental degradation from recreation and tourism

The global social, economic and environmental impacts of tourism are immense and highly complex. Given that a high percentage of tourism involves visits to naturally and culturally distinguished sites, generating large amounts of revenue, there are clearly major opportunities for investing in the maintenance and sustainable use of biological resources. At the same time, efforts must be made to minimize the adverse impacts of the tourism industry on the environment.

Historical observation indicates that self-regulation of the tourism industry for sustainable use of biological resources has only rarely been successful. This is due to a number of factors. First, as there are many individual operators, local environmental conditions may be viewed as a type of common property resource. It will not be in the interests of any individual operator to invest more than his or her competitors in maintaining the general environmental standards in the resort. Similarly, operators are very likely to "export" their adverse environmental impacts, such as refuse, waste water and sewage, to parts of the surrounding area unlikely to be visited by tourists. This reaches its most extreme form in so-called "enclave" tourism, where tourists may remain for their entire stay in an artificially maintained environment isolated from its surroundings.