Guy Sweetman
The positive impacts for tourism are as follows. Tourism brings much needed investment into an area. In addition, tourism provides employment for many local people, ranging from working in the hotels to being a ski instructor. Without the tourist industry, some less developed countries would have a much greater unemployment problem. The money that tourism brings in can be used to improve the older and less attractive parts of the area. New roads, airports and facilities can be built, which has been done at Schliersee in Bavaria, these cater for the increasing number of tourists, but also benefit the local residents by being able to travel out more themselves. Income may be used to help protect the natural environment that is the reason why visitors come in the first place. The country can benefit from overseas investment, mostly in the tourist industry, but also in other industries like importing different food and drink. Tourism may help to preserve local cultures and communities, as they become a tourist attraction. This is certainly the case with some Masai tribes in Kenya. They use the visitor’s interest and curiosity in their culture to become a tourist attraction. Although good things come out of tourism, so do bad things. In many resorts in LEDC’s very little of the money paid for the holiday actually reaches the country. The holiday company, travel agents, airlines and hotel companies get most of it. The jobs for the locals are often badly paid, with very poor working conditions. The huge number of tourists coming to see it could easily damage the environment. It is very easy for a country to see the short-term economic gains of tourism without really thinking of the long-term environmental damage going on. Increasing numbers of tourists brings problems such as littering, pollution and footpath erosion. All of these take time and money to clear up. Overseas investment, in things like luxury hotels, can mean that the money goes back to the country that it came from instead of the towns. These hotels may also take trade away from local guesthouses and hotels. Also local cultures could be devalued by tourism. They could become a sort of freak show, where the visitors begin to look down on them as being different.
Guy Sweetman
In mountain areas such as the Alps, which range from France to Italy, the environment is affected in many ways. The main reasons are erosion, pollution and deforestation.
Erosion is caused not only by humans but also natural causes such as flooding. The main cause of erosion around the mountain areas are humans though. As we ski, hike and even ride a bike around the paths they are very slowly getting worn away. In affect this causes the mountain to shrink and eventually over millions of years a mountain will become nothing more than a small hill. Other ways that erosion occurs is by cutting down trees (deforestation). This leaves then an open space where water can run straight through with no trouble. So when it rains or snows the water will carry mud and small stones with it, this will then build up in the valley bellow causing the flat land to rise. Pollution is a very bad yet unnecessary problem that humans control. If say rubbish is dumped all over a mountain path it will be picked up by road sweepers but then dumped in an area where tourists do not go. Eventually this will build up until one day it will overflow and leave the mountain in a litter pile!
To help some of these problems the following should be done. Forestry is one industry where the conservation of resources is very important. In some countries the natural wood resources are destroyed, never to be replaced. However an increasing amount of countries are introducing schemes to re-forest areas once the trees have been cut down. These are fast growing coniferous trees that take only about 25 years to reach maturity. This will then prevent flooding and avalanches.
Recycling is a very important. Bottle banks, paper and tin recycling are all common features of our lives now, and they all help to keep the resources of the world. There are many natural products that can be recycled and the more that they are the better for the environment because there will be no litter.
Pollution Controls have been introduced to some countries to try to reduce the use of fossil fuels and other natural resources. They have been heavily polluting other natural resources such as the atmosphere and the oceans, causing problems from a local to global scale. Fossil Fuel power stations release harmful carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which adds to the greenhouse effect causing global warming. They can also produce acid rain. Controlling pollution like this has to be done on a government level, and in the UK tough new controls on the amounts of pollution allowed by power stations have been introduced. Cars are one of the worst polluters in the world, giving off a variety of harmful gases, including carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. There are more and more cars on the roads and this will surely continue.
Guy Sweetman
Not only do cars pollute, but they also use up the oil reserves of the world. Initiatives to make cars cleaner and more fuel efficient have been introduced relatively successfully, for example all new cars now have to have catalytic converters. The problem is that all of these things add to the price of the car, and the manufacturer doesn’t want to put the prices up because they may lose customers.
So basically humans are to blame that the natural environment is being destroyed. If we carry on to do this one day the beautiful mountains will loose all of their glory, from the snow melting to the mountains shrinking.
By doing all of these new enhancements to save the environment will cost a lot of money and take time to complete.
As an example for a MEDC coping with tourism I am going to use Dartmoor. It is one of the 12 designated National Parks in England and Wales. The government had two main aims, which were to preserve and enhance the natural beauty of the area and to promote the enjoyment of the area by the public. Since their designation, National Parks have been the subject of conflicting uses, which has only been increased by the rising numbers of tourists who visit the areas. Apart from the tourists, other people who have an interest in the parks include local farmers, local residents, the Army, the Forestry Commission, the National Trust and the Water Board. Dartmoor is an example of a national park where many of these users have some into conflict. Dartmoor holds up to over 8 million visitors every year. In terms of some of the other National Parks, such as the Lake District or the Peak District, this is a small number but it still has brought its fair share of advantages and disadvantages. Most of these visitors come to walk or mountain bike on the moor, look around the villages or use the reservoirs for water sports. Some of the problems encountered on Dartmoor include farmers using the moor for grazing their sheep, they quickly get very annoyed when they have flocks disturbed by dogs let loose by their owners out for a walk. Also there is an army camp near Okehampton, in the north of the moor. The northern half of the moor is a military firing range, where they practise with live ammunition, both bullets and shells. Obviously this can cause problems for tourists unaware of the firing days. Red flags designate the area, but there still have been times when people have found themselves in the middle of a training exercise! One advantage of the military use of the moor is that it does mean that less people go to that area, and so the natural environment is protected.
Guy Sweetman
The huge tourist numbers puts great pressures on the narrow roads found all over Dartmoor. The National parks Authority has introduced car parks and information centres to try to concentrate the visitors to certain areas, whilst protecting others. Car parks also prevent the problems found in some villages of tourists parking their cars on the grassy verges. “Honey pot” sites, such as Hay Tore, attract a huge amount of visitors, creating problems of parking, footpath erosion and littering. The NPA has had to try to encourage people to go to other equally spectacular tore to try to take the pressure off of the Hay Tore area. The increase in outdoor activities such as mountain biking, water sports and hang-gliding has put pressure on the natural resources of the area. The facilities for tourists have also come under pressure as more and more people come to the area. Solutions have been attempted, such as promoting other parts of the moor, introducing more tourist facilities and restricting where people can and cannot walk. These have been reasonably successful in protecting the area. Like the Alps and the Himalayas, Dartmoor is becoming over run by tourists. The moor does have one advantage over the mountains though. This is the weather and local government. Dartmoor does not have the best of building areas because of marshy wet land and farming areas. This is good because it protects the environment from becoming a local building site! Also because the UK is an MEDC (more economically developed country) the people have more of an understanding for their rights. This allows people to have more decisions and votes on what they want and don’t want. The government acts as a hero in a way because in a way we are more sophisticated than an LEDC which allows us to know if a site should be protected or not. Whereas the people of an LEDC would destroy a rare site without thinking of the consequences.
Guy Sweetman
