what are the possible ways to minimize negative environmental impacts of tourism ? in 200 words
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Answer:
Tourism and Environment: An Introduction
Before elaborating the relativity of Tourism and Environment, it is necessary to understand both terms individually. Relativity is to distinguish contrast and characterise between two different values for understanding their dependability upon each other.
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Tourism: Tourism is now a phenomenon, not just a simple holiday activity. It also has to be considered that tourism and tourist are two different characteristics. Approaches differentiate accordingly and it can be defined according to both understandings:
‘It [tourism] is a human activity which encompasses human behaviour, use of resources, and interaction with other people, economies and environments.’ Bull, 1991:1 cited in Holden, A. (2008).
From mentioned definition tourism is mainly focused on natural or social aspects, where author has examined tourism on the basis of environmental characteristics. Another understanding could be from the perspective of a visitor or tourist, again I would like to mention a definition from Holden’s writing; where he used another author’s definition to differentiate from the previous point of view.
Tourism as: ‘an attitude to the world or a way of seeing the world, not necessarily what we find only at the end of a long and arduous journey’ Franklin, 2003:33 cited in Holden, A. (2008).
This definition is from the perspective of a tourist as a single entity and more individualistic. Here personal experience is more valuable for a consumer. Tourism is not a very old study for world but travel defiantly is. Tourism is more of gaining an exceptional experience than a regular living, while travel can consists of various reasons behind it.
But according to Hunter and Green (1995, pp: 1) “There is no universally accepted definition of tourism. This is not surprising, since what constitutes a ‘tourist’ and the ‘tourism industry’ are still matters of debate.”
Environment: In terms of tourism, Environment is always understood as a nature or atmosphere of a destination or a place which is used for tourism. Nature consists of mountains, water resources such as sea side, sea, rivers, waterfalls etc. Green environment includes plants, forests, parks, rainforests, safaris etc. when elaborated to wilderness it consists wild life, animals, forest species and so on. Socially; heritage sites or cultural uniqueness is also a part of an environment.
‘In environmental studies it has commonly been assumed that there exists a fundamental connection between a society’s management of natural resources and its perception of nature.’ Brunn and Kalland (1995:1) cited in Holden, A. (2008).
Environmental studies and explanations are vast and distributions of its characteristics are crucial. If we look at it from a different perspective it seems environment consists of whole world (living or non living beings) including humans, animals, plants and resources. From evolution humans are using environmental resources. When observed this use or loss, it is categorised as Environmental study. Resistance and Resilience are two distinctions in this study, where Resistance is tolerance of the site (while getting used and still being undisturbed) and Resilience is the ability to recover from the happened loss or change. Some sites have either qualities or some not. Hence due to its characteristics,
Hunter and Green (1995) stated that ‘environment can be subdivided into three components as the physical environment or a biotic environment which includes solar energy, soil, water and climate’.