The Effects of Tourism on the Environment
Nearly everyone on the planet would love to see animals and wildlife in their natural habitat with plenty of the space and the resources they need to survive on their own. The problem is that this level of nature conservation is expensive. Leaving land free from development comes at a price. One solution to the expense of providing animals with protected areas is to use tourism as a way to fund the existence of the park. The advantages of this approach to nature conservation are that the protected area becomes affordable, if not profitable, and therefore the long term survival of the protected area is more assured. It also allows humans to interact with wildlife and see these animals in their natural habitats. This kind of exposure can lead to a lifelong appreciation for the importance of nature. The drawback to this approach to developing protected areas is that the human impact because of the tourism has a serious environmental impact. A look at several international examples will demonstrate how the balance between the advantages of using tourism to fund conservation and the disadvantages is a delicate and precarious balance. Recent moves towards sustainable tourism may offer the solution that both tourist and environmentalist
Columbia University’s Earth Institute is an example of an organization that is trying to cross international borders in order to promote overall sustainability. Sustainability is the environmental idea of making a much less dramatic impact on an environment by gauging all actions like food production, water consumption and development. Since the Earth Institute is interested in the study of all of Earth’s systems, the idea of the sustainability of tourism is something that they have conducted research on. Another one of the Earth Institute’s projects is to conduct research on some of the correlations between poverty and environmental degradation. The goal of Earth Institute is to improve the environment by improving the quality of life for Earth’s poorest billions. Their idea is that if you take care of people’s needs, they are much more likely to take care of the environment. The key to finding the balance between tourism and protected natural areas is to find a way for the natural area and all of the native species to coexist with mankind. This is a hard and difficult balancing act, but clearly the model of paving parts of beaches for parking lots and huge hotels has simply not worked. A new model is needed, and sustainable tourist offers the solution and a way for both the environment and the tourist to live together in successful cohabitation. A great example of this very issue of the beaches that everyone of every nation seems to enjoy visiting. What happens typically in a beach area is that instead of a natural beach setting, hotels, motels, and resorts are built right on the shoreline. This overdevelopment leads to a huge environmental impact. Habitat for animals is lost to an ocean front pool or sunning deck. Dunes are paved for parking lots and an entire natural area is lost. Tourists are no longer even able to see many of the native or natural plants. The next thing that happens is that the once nice, wide beach begins to erode because the overdevelopment interferes with the natural sand cycle where the shoreline is allowed to move and add new sand through storms and the natural sand cy
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Barrier Reef,
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Park Africa,
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call change,
Serengeti National,
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natural sand,
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Approximate Word count = 1444
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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