Environmental Impacts of Tourism

Over the years, tourism has grown to be one of the most rampant industries in our economy. Visiting new places, trying new food, observing new cultures, and visiting sites of attraction all are great ways for recreation, and creates booming business for many tourism industries. However, tourists forget the consequences of their recreation. In the long run, tourism can lead to the loss of biodiversity that destabilizes ecosystems, and threatens our food supplies. Tourism also leads to an increase in ozone – depleting pollutants such as chlorofluorocarbons. Refrigerants, aerosol sprays, and pollutants from aircrafts all contribute to the destruction of our ozone layer in the long run. Furthermore, tourism not only impacts weather; we can also

In 2012, transportation accounted for 19% of the total global energy consumption, 96% of which was produced by fossil fuels [1, p. 201]. Furthermore, air transport is the most carbon intensive mode of transportation, accounting for approximately 10 times more carbon emissions than road transport and 100 times more than shipping (per tonne km) [2, p. 4].

The environmental costs to increased tourism to Machu Picchu out number the benefits in many ways. Environmentally, tourism does help to facilitate increased awareness of the need for conservation and preservation of natural, cultural, and historical resources. Machu Picchu could also be considered a clean industry, but that might be asking a lot when one looks at

     Tourism also has its costs/down-sides. One of the social costs to the community because of tourism is that it may attract visitors whose lifestyles and ideas may conflict with the community’s (which commonly happens throughout the world, a good example of this can be seen in the settling of North America, and the effect it had on the Native Americans). Tourism could also lead to the overloading of porters which would lead to health problems. A loss of traditional values and culture is a possible outcome as well, through imitation of visitor behavior or

Tourists create pollution by everyday activities, air pollution is caused by indoor fires that are lit and the smoke is then let out into the air not only causing air pollution but damaging flora and fauna also smoke from cigarettes. Tourism creates a waste problem from grabbing lunch and creating rubbish but also dropping rubbish if you’re eating your lunch and drop your rubbish this also leads back to the problem with fauna and flora and damaging the environment. Green-house gases coming from cars, trucks and other machinery can affect the environment. There are multiple ways that waste can affect the environment on Mt Buller, but there are also many procedures and management plans in place to try and decrease the amount of waste produced

As mentioned by Rimmington & Morrison (2009), the assistance from different parts of the world presents a new and diverse outlook for future research including theoretical innovations and revelations, cultural and environmental aspects, tourist destination and other ecotourism and recreational aspects of tourism and hospitality industry (Brotherton,

However, from the environmental changes in Maldives, impacts of tourism are starting to become negative influences:

Tourism is the world’s largest industry with nature-based ecotourism seeing rapid growth since its initial arrival in the 1980s. It is estimated by the World Tourism Organisation that nature tourism generates 7% of all international travel expenditure (Lindberg, 1997) and this figure will have increased rapidly over recent years. It’s increase in popularity is due to a number of factors; tourists becoming increasingly bored of the typical sun, sea and sand holiday’s, the increase in global awareness or environmental issues such as global

From an environmental perspective, it is apparent that the world is starting to realise that increases in tourism are having a negative impact on the environment. This is due to increases in energy consumption, which in turn heightens the effects of global warming (Neto, 2002). There are many controls that governments are trying to put into place, such as flight rationing (Liverpool Business School, 2009). However, it can be argued that these have not really begun to have a significant effect on tourism, as they are still insufficient to dampen demand. It may become a problem in future years, as the number of controls is likely to increase. Perhaps the largest environmental factor would be natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina (Cashell, 2005) and the tsunami that hit Asia in December 2004 (Birkland, 2006). These will impact negatively on people’s confidence in visiting places that have been hit severely by such disasters.

The Travel and Tourism industry is still one of the largest single businesses in world commerce and its importance is widely recognized. The tourism industry is now one of the largest sectors earning foreign exchange. In the face of many benefits, many countries have started assigning due weight age to the tourism industry in their national development agenda. Tourism is an industry that operates on a massively broad scale: it embraces activities ranging from the smallest sea-side hotel; to air-lines, multi-national hotel chains and major international tour operators. Originally, non-traditional industries such as tourism emerged as a solution to strike a balance between ecology and industry

At last, the ecological element is also important when investigating the business environment and the CSR has gradually ended up coordinated in numerous associations' business goals. For a hotel industry to be socially, dependable it must finish numerous approaches, for example, submitting to the energy consumption laws, lessening carbon footprint, and connecting with the local community. Then again, the natural disaster has turned out to be incessant. Subsequently, numerous destination spots are intensely influenced and sustainable tourism must be practiced to save natural resources (Levonsky & Conley, 2004).

Literature reveals that the globalisation of the airline industry has resulted in easier accessibility across international borders. This has greatly benefited the tourism industries economic sector with a rise of foreign tourists and an increase in global competition (Dwyer, 2015). However the negative effects on the environment are vast with climate change has become a global problem. A swish study proved that out of the countries examined, 50-85% of tourism based emissions are as a result of air transport and therefore if the tourism industry is to reduce emissions, it can only be achieved through a major decrease in these environmentally destructive emissions caused by aviation (Perch-Nielsen et al, 2010).

However, some studies indicate that tourists might have cultural, social, economic and environmental impacts on the local residents. In fact, these recent studies have awakened

Increased demand in tourism and trade particularly makes air travel less sustainable as the environmental externalities that already exist are exacerbated. Increased demand for air travel without innovation into sustainable technology means continued damaging effects to the environment. Air travel is an increasingly popular phenomena and air transport volume is now five times as large as it was in 1970 (Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2009). This statistic is useful in that it creates an overall idea air travel is increasing, but its meaning is too ambiguous for proper effect. The’ volume of air transport’ could mean the number of flights per week, or the number of sold out flights etc. Although similar, each varying meaning that the reader chooses to adopt would lead to different

Planning and development are both extremely important factors within the tourism industry and can have both positive and negative effects on the environment, local communities and tourist destinations. “Destination planning aims to limit the negative impacts of cultural tourism upon the history and lifestyles of the local community. An understanding of sustainable tourist development allows for the development of culture without loss of its authentic identity” (Maidment. T. 2012). This statement discusses the importance of planning to avoid having any negative impacts on environments and communities. Because the effects of tourism are so severe to destinations, many natural and cultural resources have been destroyed, therefore tourism planning is vital to preserve and maintain these places for future generations.