Discuss the Economic Environmental and socio cultural impacts on tourism
Environmental Impacts on Tourism The Environment, whether it is natural or artificial, is the most fundamental ingredient of the tourism product. However, as soon as tourism activity takes place, the environment is inevitably changed or modified either to facilitate tourism or during the tourism process. Negative impacts from tourism occur when the level of visitor use is greater than the environments ability to cope with this use within the acceptable limits of change. Uncontrolled conventional tourism poses potential threats to many natural areas around the world. Negative Impacts Depletion of Natural resources: Water resources: Water is one of the most critical natural resources. The tourism industry generally overuses water resources for hotels, swimming pools, golf courses and personal use of water by tourists. ... Local resources: Tourism can create great pressure on local resources like energy, food and other raw materials that may already be in short supply. Greater extraction and transport of these resources exacerbates the physical impacts associated with their exploitation. ... Increased construction of tourism and recreational facilities has increased the pressure on these resources and on scenic landscapes. ... Forests suffer the negative impacts of tourism in the form of deforestation caused by fuel wood collection. ... One consequence of the increase in air transport is that tourism now accounts for more than 60% of air travel and is therefore responsible for an important share of air emissions. ... Air pollution from tourist transportation has impacts on the global level, especially from carbon dioxide emissions related to transportation energy use. ... Some of these impacts are quite specific to tourist activities. ... Changes in salinity and siltation can have wide-ranging impacts on coastal environments. ... Unfortunately, it is not possible to develop tourism without incurring environmental impacts, but it is possible, with correct planning to manage tourism development in order to minimise the negative impacts while encouraging the positive impacts. Positive Impacts The preservation/restoration of ancient monuments, sites and historic buildings such as the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids(Egypt), the Taj Mahal (India), Stonehenge and Warwick Castle (UK) The creation of national parks and wildlife parks such as Yellowstone Park (USA), the Amboseli National Park and the Maasai Mara National reserve (Kenya), Las Canadas (Tenerife), the Pitter National Park (Venezuela), Fjord Land National Park (New Zealand); Protection of reefs and beaches, the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), Grand Anse (Grenada); and The maintenance of forests such as the New Forest (UK), Colo I Suva (Fiji).