How Tourism Ensures Environmental Sustainability

Categories: Economy Environment Sustainability

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Sustainability could be defined as an ability or capacity of something to be maintained or to sustain itself. The word sustainability can be split into three categories, environmental sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability. An example of a way tourism can be managed to ensure environmental sustainability is the Aquilla Ecolodges in Dunkeld, Australia. Aquilla ensures that their lodges have as little as an impact on the environment around them as possible, for example when building the lodges only fallen timber was used so that no timber would have to be cut down for the construction of their lodge.

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Aquilla also gets its energy from solar power stored in a bank of batteries that they can use whenever they need it and from biodiesel which is made from recycled vegetable oil from local restaurants, therefore their fuel for energy did not have to travel a long way to get to them and so less emissions were released due to them sourcing their fuel (vegetable oil) locally.

Aquilla also makes sure that visitors leave no non-organic waste behind with them at the lodge so visitors must take their waste home with them so that the area does not have extra non-organic waste because of the lodge.

In an extra effort to be environmentally sustainable the owners of the lodge decided to re use their grey water in toilets, however they make sure to never water the bush land with this water as it could alter the nutrients in the soil and could change the PH affecting the plants and animals living there which would go against their effort to be sustainable as they want to not harm the environment in any way by their lodges.

Another example of a way tourism can be managed to ensure sustainability is Annapurna in Nepal. Annapurna is part of the Annapurna conservation Area project (ACAP) the largest conservation area in Nepal.

ACAP work to conserve the resources of Annapurna, for example they have guards in the forest to stop locals from cutting down timber and they restrict the number of people coming into Annapurna at one time to reduce the impact the tourists have on the area and increase sustainability. Another example of a way that tourism can be managed to ensure environmental sustainability is the Red Sea in Egypt, for example Marine protected areas have been put in place to conserve the beautiful coral reefs which bring a large majority of tourists each year and have such a large biodiversity including hundreds of species of fish.

The Egyptian Environmental affairs agency have trained a force of Red Sea Rangers who's main job is to patrol the substantial proportion of the coral reefs to make sure people are not damaging the reefs so that they may be maintained for as long as possible. There is also an effort being made to raise awareness of how delicate the reefs are and how to view and dive in the reefs safely without doing any more damage. An example of way tourism can be managed to ensure economic sustainability is Annapurna in Nepal. Upon tourists visiting Annapurna they must pay a fee, which is used to help the local people.

There are 25000 trekkers every year and the money from this supports 40000 local people in Annapurna, this will help the area stay authentic because the locals will not be pushed out by wealthier people as the locals will be given money from the tourists visits to Annapurna. Annapurna is also self-contained and has no external influence therefore there is no economic leakage so the locals will be able to stay living in Annapurna and the economy will be able to sustain itself as large companies such as Hilton are not leaking the money from the local economy. An example of a way tourism can be managed to ensure social stability is Annapurna.

Annapurna is part of the ACAP scheme, this scheme works make Annapurna sustainable in all aspects, for example they run health and family planning education so that locals are able to live long lives and are able to have access to birth control so that the area does not become over populated. ACAP also run a village development committee so that the locals can have a say in what happens in Annapurna, which will make them care more and be happier about where they live, giving them more respect for the area therefore they will and encourage others to take better care of the area for example people will volunteer to be a forest guard to make sure people are not cutting down timber when they should not be as they want to take care of the area the area is then more sustainable, on top of this if people are happy about where they live they will keep bringing up their families in the area bringing more money into the economy.

In conclusion I think that environmental sustainability attracts tourists and keeps tourists returning therefore brings in more tourists increasing economic stability, however it is difficult to be environmentally sustainable on a large scale and is much more efficient on a small scale such as Aquilla as it is easier to monitor what is going on and what tourists are doing to the environment on a smaller scale.