WASHINGTON, 29 January — Before Sept. 11, travel and tourism was the world’s largest industry, accounting for one in every 12 jobs. The massive $3.6 trillion industry almost ground to a halt after the terrorist attacks, and the ripple effects extended well beyond the United States, exposing the vulnerability of countries too dependent on international tourism, according to the World watch Institute, a Washington — based environmental research organization. Its recently released report is of particular importance since Saudi Arabia has recently decided to open its doors to tourism. Lisa Mastny, World watch’s author of Traveling Light: New Paths for International Tourism, told journalists that across the developing world, communities are trying to come to terms with the mixed impacts of booming tourism, one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the global economy. Directly and indirectly, travel and tourism activities accounted for some $3.6 trillion of economic activity in 2000-or roughly 11 percent of the gross world product.
Rushing to capitalize on their rich natural and cultural attractions, many developing countries welcome tourism as a way to stimulate investments, generate foreign exchange earnings, and diversify their economies. Tourism can be more lucrative and less resource-intensive than growing a single cash crop or pursuing traditional industries like mining, oil development, and manufacturing. These tourism investments appear to be paying off. Tourism is the only sector where developing countries consistently run a trade surplus. It represents roughly 10 percent of developing-world exports and accounts for more than 40 percent of the gross domestic product in some countries. An estimated 65 percent of the roughly 200 million jobs created by tourism annually are found in the developing world, notes Mastny.
Unfortunately, tourism remains one of the world’s least regulated industries, a situation that often has negative implications for local economies, cultures, and ecosystems.
Without significant efforts to divert tourism from its current path, important ground may even be lost, says Mastny. Spurred by a rapidly changing and increasingly centralized global economy, many governments are under pressure to grant outside investors-such as international hotel chains and tour operations — easier access to tourism assets. The influx of these businesses threatens to crowd out the smaller, homegrown tourism enterprises that form the backbone of the tourism industry. Tourism is also causing serious environmental damage in the developing world, Mastny warned. The sheer numbers of tourists, as well as the facilities built to accommodate them, are straining ecosystems at many destinations. Tourist transport, hotels, golf courses, and other developments typically require huge amounts of energy, water, and other resources, often at the expense of local users. They also generate considerable waste and pollution in destinations that are not prepared to deal with these impacts. Mastny says industry action alone is not enough to ensure sustainable tourism development. Governments at the national, regional, and local levels can supplement industry initiatives by implementing a wide range of policies and regulatory measures, from restricting environmentally damaging construction to limiting the number of visitors allowed at sensitive sites
Today, nearly two thirds of international tourists travel for vacation, leisure, and recreation, as opposed to visiting friends and relatives or traveling for health, business, and religious purposes. But tourist tastes are gradually changing. Mastny says there is a growing displeasure with heavily commercialized, overrun, and polluted destinations is spurring a shift from the highly packaged and standardized mass tourism of the past half-century. In its place, rising numbers of more flexible and independent travelers are pursuing more personalized experiences like exploring culture or nature. A study of US travelers in the early 1990s supported this shift: While 20 percent of respondents were “after the sun,” 40 percent sought more “life-enhancing” travel. These changes in travel preferences are reflected in surveys of the most popular destinations worldwide, and tourism to and within Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia is growing rapidly. As air travel brings many of Earth’s most ecologically fragile destinations within easy reach, concern about tourism’s environmental impacts is rising. Travelers from industrial countries often try to replicate their own high-consumption lifestyles at their destinations, increasing pressures on ecosystems and resources. Yet few developing-country governments have the capacity to protect their attractions adequately from all these new visitors. Studies suggest that as much as 90 percent of a tourist’s energy consumption is spent getting to and from the destination. Increasingly, the passenger jet, the most polluting form of transport per kilometer traveled, is overtaking the automobile as the primary means of tourist travel: An estimated 43 percent of international tourists now fly to their destinations, while 42 percent travel by road and 15 percent go by either rail or ship. Air travel has been particularly important in the developing world, where in some countries at least 90 percent of tourists arrive by plane, says World watch’s Mastny.
But rising carbon emissions from air travel and other sources could end up hurting many of the world’s top tourism destinations. Already, rising sea levels and coral bleaching events linked to warming temperatures are threatening the economies of low-lying tropical islands.
In addition, Mastny says, the world’s hotels and their guests consume massive quantities of resources on a daily basis, including energy for heating and cooling rooms, lighting hallways, and cooking meals, as well as water for washing laundry, filling swimming pools and watering golf courses. This resource use is not only expensive-in the United States, the average laundry cost per occupied room is almost $3.50 a day-but it can also damage the environment. According to one estimate, a tourist spending a two-week vacation at a resort hotel can use more than 100 kilograms of fossil fuels.
Heavy promotion of golf tourism at many resort destinations has intensified water shortages, particularly in Asia. Each year, up to 5,000 hectares of the Earth’s land surface- an area half the size of Paris-are cleared for golf courses, and one 18-hole course can consume more than 2.3 million liters of water daily. One popular course on an island in Malaysia uses as much water annually as a local village of 20,000. At destinations where freshwater is scarce, over-consumption by tourists and tourism facilities can divert supplies from local residents or farmers, exacerbating shortages and raising utility prices. In the Philippines, the diversion of water to tourist lodges and restaurants threatens to destroy paddy irrigation at the 3,000-year-old Banaue rice terraces, a unique cultural heritage site.
In addition to consuming water, energy, and other resources, tourism creates large quantities of waste. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that the average tourist produces roughly one kilogram of solid waste and litter each day. Cruise operators also dump an untold amount of waste illegally to avoid having to store it on board or to pay for costly disposal on land. In one highly publicized case, Royal Caribbean Cruises received a record $18 million fine in 1999 for 21 counts of discharging excess oily bilge and other pollutants into US waters and then attempting to cover up its crime.
Mastny believes these problems will likely persist as shipbuilders rush to meet the rising demand for cruise vacations. To accommodate larger vessels, countries often dredge deep-water harbors or modify their coastlines, destroying coastal ecosystems in the process.
When ships dock, their massive anchors and chains can break coral heads and devastate underwater habitats. In 1994, one local scientist in the Cayman Islands reported that more than 120 hectares of reefs had been lost as a result of cruise ships anchoring there. Ecotourism is one of the fastest-growing segments of the tourism industry. Though the varying definitions make it difficult to measure, the International Ecotourism Society estimates that this form of travel is growing by 20 percent annually and that it generated some $154 billion in receipts in 2000.
But as ecotourism enters the mainstream, it increasingly faces many of the same problems as conventional tourism. Just like conventional tourists, ecotourists fly long distances to their destinations and require food, lodging, and other basics, consuming resources and producing waste.
At the same time, while many early ecotourists were motivated by a keen environmental and political awareness, not all of today’s ecotourists are as environmentally minded, or are prompted by a desire to learn about and respect nature.
As ecotourism increasingly comes into its own, it is clear that one of the biggest challenges is balancing the potential benefits with the pitfalls. Depending on how it is done, it can create its share of social and environmental problems. The degree of impact ultimately reflects the level of commitment of the enterprise, the quality of guide training, and the behavior of tourists themselves. Fortunately, Mastny says the tourism industry has taken many positive steps to become more environmentally and socially responsible. This change is in part a response to growing consumer pressure for more environment-friendly tourism products. A 1997 study by the Travel Industry Association of America reports that some 83 percent of the public supported “green” travel services, and that people were willing to spend 6 percent more on average for travel services and products provided by environmentally responsible companies. Worldwide, hotels are embracing a wide range of environmental actions, from installing solar lighting and purchasing biodegradable housekeeping supplies to composting beach seaweed for hotel gardens and loaning bicycles to guests. By implementing its environmental management program, Inter-Continental Hotels reduced overall energy costs by 27 percent between 1988 and 1995. In 1995 alone the chain saved $3.7 million, cutting its sulfur dioxide emissions by 10,670 kilograms and saving 610,866 cubic meters of water-an average water reduction of nearly 7 percent per hotel, despite higher occupancies. Other large hotel chains have made similar steps in this direction. Spearheading this movement at the global level is the London-based International Hotels Environment Initiative (IHEI), which works with hotels, hotel associations, suppliers, tourist boards, governments, and NGOs to encourage environmentally and socially responsible business practice. It represents more than 8,000 hotels in 111 countries, including international chains such as Hilton, Marriott, Radisson SAS, Taj Group, Scandic, and Forte.
Cruise industry, too, is making an effort to integrate environmental management practices into its activities, though much remains to be done. Some companies are embracing relatively simple initiatives such as recycling plastic ware and using recyclable and reusable containers. Holland America, Princess Cruises, and other lines are out-fitting newer vessels with on-board water treatment plants, incinerators, or co-generation incinerators that harness energy from waste burning, though critics have raised concern about the health impacts of toxic emissions. There are also growing international efforts to adopt more environmentally sound practices. Tour operators and travel agents can play a big part in redirecting tourism because they help determine not only where tourists go, but also which services they use. Many tour companies are setting up professional guide accreditation programs and investing in extensive training to ensure that their guides adhere to sound practices.
