Environmental threats to tourism

In many mountain regions, small islands, coastal
areas and other ecologically fragile places visited by
tourists, there is an increasing concern that the negative
impact of tourism on the natural environment can ultimately
hurt the tourism industry itself. In other words,
the negative impact of intensive tourism activities on the
environmental quality of beaches, mountains, rivers,
forests and other ecosystems also compromise the viability
of the tourism industry in these places.
There is now plenty of evidence of the ‘life-cycle’
of a tourist destination, that is, the evolution from its
discovery, to development and eventual decline because
of over-exploitation and subsequent deterioration its
key attractions. In many developing and developed
countries alike, tourism destinations are becoming
overdeveloped up to the point where the damage caused
by environmental degradation—and the eventual loss of
revenues arising from a collapse in tourism arrivals—
becomes irreversible.
Examples of such exploitation of ‘non-renewable
tourism resources’ range from a small fishing village in
India’s Kerala state—which saw its tourist sector collapse
after two decades of fast growth, because inadequate
disposal of solid waste—to several places in the
industrialized world, such as Italy’s Adriatic coast and
Germany’s Black Forest.14 It can also be argued that environmental
pollution and urban sprawl tend to undermine
further tourist development in major urban destinations
in developing countries, such as Bangkok, Cairo and
Mexico City.
In addition, tourism in many destinations could be
particularly threatened by external environmental
shocks, notably the potential threat of global warming
and sea-level rise. Significant rises in sea level could
cause serious problems to tourism activities, particularly
in low-lying coastal areas and small islands. Global
warming is also expected to increase climate variability
and to provoke changes in the frequency and intensity of
extreme climate events—such as tropical windstorms and
associated storm surges and coastal flooding—that may
threaten tourism activities at certain destinations (see
UN, 2001b, ch. VII).