Managing tourism for both recreation and conservation
- Controlling environmental impacts of tourism
- Reducing unsustainable tourism
- Ensuring sustainable tourism
Context
Tourism is closely linked to the preservation of a healthy environment, which in turn is an essential element of tourism development and helps to raise public awareness on some environmental issues. Tourism policies are developed at national and regional level and may have an important impact on biodiversity and sustainability.
Implementation
The prospect of tourist dollars has transformed Baltimore's waterfront into a lively marketplace, and San Francisco owes its remaining cable cars to their international appeal. African wildlife, once seemingly doomed, enjoys new value as a tourist lure for photo safaris. In the long run, California's redwoods will prove more valuable left standing upright than chopped for lumber. Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, a major cruise port, has never looked better thanks to tourism-sparked restoration efforts.
Claim
Sustainable tourism, in many areas, is providing extra resources and employment to local communities giving them additional motivation for the conservation of nature and protection of the environment.
Sustainable development in touristic areas needs to reconcile the interests of the tourism industry, tourism satisfaction and the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.
The travel and tourism industry needs to strike a balance with nature. Travel to faraway, exotic, hard-to-reach places is a positive, enriching experience for many tourists, and many are willing to pay for such experiences. But their presence, and the lingering influence of their money and mores, should not kill coral reefs, turn pristine mountain gorges into garbage dumps or lead children to become beggars, thieves, prostitutes and drug peddlers.
A new, more sensitive era of tourism is upon us that may be able to preserve the integrity of a destination rather than destroy it. Tourism can spur nations and communities to preserve their natural and cultural treasures.
Virtually everybody – except perhaps oil-rich Saudi Arabia – is infatuated with tourism because it is a labour-intensive moneymaker, and it can stimulate such spillover industries as agriculture (food for restaurants) and handicrafts (to tempt shoppers).
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UIA organization
Reference
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SDG
