Sustainable Tourism and Biodiversity

This assignment delves into the crucial relationship between sustainable tourism and biodiversity conservation. It examines the challenges posed by tourism to fragile ecosystems, emphasizing the need for responsible practices to mitigate negative impacts. The document explores international conventions and environmental safeguarding policies essential for preserving biodiversity. Additionally, it highlights the importance of promoting inward-focused tourism over outward-based models to ensure both economic sustainability and ecological integrity.

Running head: SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
Sustainable Tourism
Name of the student
University name
Author’s note

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Introduction
The current assignment focuses on the concept of ensuring tourism is sustainable. Thus, a
number of environmental, societal and economic considerations need to be taken into
consideration for ensuring sufficient resources are maintained for the betterment of the future
generations.
Definition of sustainability
“Sustainability is an approach undertaken in thinking about the future in which
environmental, economic and societal considerations are balance for improving the quality of
life”.
Background of the scenario
There are a number of issues which have been affecting the objectives of sustainable
tourism and affecting the global environment as a whole. The factors could be divided into the
following specific concerns such as high carbon emissions, energy and water consumption,
contribution to economy by job creation, tough working conditions, contribution of franchising
and ownership models at the local level, changes in the government taxation policies. Thus, all
these factors contribute significantly towards the growth and sustenance of a tourism business.
In this context, much complex investments are involved within the tourism sector owing
to the social, environmental and economic concerns. Therefore, equal amount of participation is
required from all the stakeholders which include the tourism company, the state tourism
departments among the few. The role of the Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) is important

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in balancing the potential profitability of an organisation against sustainable and responsible
business models.
Tourism could be divided into two basic types where the kind of tourism is only based
upon visiting a place and relishing its natural beauty, without thinking much about the
environmental and social concerns. However as asserted by Lee (2013), Venezuela’s Bolivarian
revolution is slowly taking into consideration the development of humanity rather than
contributing towards the bank account of the tourism investors.
Environmental Issues
Venezuela ranks under the top 10 list of the ecological diverse counties. It is the home to
extensive rain forests, which can be classified into cloud forest located at the coastal mountain to
the beautiful rain forest located at the Amazon basin and guinea shield. Forests and plantation
covers more than half of the Venezuela's land area (Hansen et al. 2013). The largest extent of
forest found in Venezuela is Bolivar then ranks Amazonas. Venezuela is also known for
nurturing more than 2100 species of plants, 353 different species of mammals, 323 reptiles, 288
amphibians and more than 1400 birds. Venezuela is a rich source of bio diversity. It is due to its
biodiversity, Venezuela cores high as an important destination among the nature loving tourist
(Laurance 2012).
However, recent forest degradation in Venezuela has significantly affected is ecological
diversity. Apart from deforestation, water pollution, coal mining, oil drilling, wood logging and
soil erosion are other threats which are hampering the species richness in Venezuela. The rivers
are also getting polluted due to the volatile organic compounds, discharged by the industries and
via the oil spills which is endangering the aquatic species an the wild animals who feed on water.

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Not only this, Venezuela is has cheapest gas rates which increases the number of automobiles
plying and the amount of oil consumption rates by these vehicles. This increase in the number of
automobiles has lead to increases in the parameter of air pollution. According to International
energy Agency, Venezuela is fourth most contamination country in Latin America (Van de Graaf
2012). According to them, Venezuela pollutes the atmosphere with more than 140 million of
carbon dioxide per year. According to United Nation (UN) report, Venezuela ranks 29 in the list
of top most carbon dioxide countries in America.
Venezuelan Constitution adopted in the year of 1999 states that, every person an equal
rights to enjoy a safe and secured ecologically stable environment and every generation has the
right and an obligation to secure the biological diversity of the country. However, the
environmental policies framed by the Venezuelan government is criticised to be over ambitious
and unrealistic. This could be attributed to the fact that country lacks the capacity to implement
sustainable environmental strategy optimally. However, in order to maintain the biodiversity and
to retain is charm among the tourist; Venezuela needs to implement certain sustainable
environmental strategies. One of the important sustainable strategy adopted by the Venezuelan
government is, “Tree Mission”. This mission aims to recuperate certain trees and plants which
are critically endangered or lies under the urgent threat of extinction. The success of this mission
lies in the fact that, during the tenure of 2006 to 2008, it has claimed to plant trees across 18.322
hectors (Villarroya, Barros and Kiesecker 2014). The government is also working to revise its
sustainable environmental policies further. The International Seminar on the Environment
organised by the Venezuelan Parliamentary Group discussed about the current sustainable
environmental needs of Venezuela and is currently working to improve the overall scenario
(Villarroya, Barros and Kiesecker 2014).

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Ven Diagram
Source: Created by Author

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Social Factors
The concept of social sustainability mostly encompasses social equity, health equity,
liveability, community development, social and human rights, social responsibility, social justice
and cultural competence. Venezuela bears a unique fusion of indigenous people encompassing
African and Spanish people. The tourism of Venezuela is directed towards the development of
the humanity rather than promoting an increase in the bank account of the tasteless business
owners. The contextualised tourism of Venezuela is specifically aimed at fomenting the
organisation of the community, encouraging ecological awareness and adjoining appreciation,
collective history, rescuing the local culture and promoting the exchange of knowledge and
solidarity between different regions. Venezuela socialise tourism rather than providing an elite
tourism. The Venezuelan tourist department promotes Amazon forest, golden beach of the
Caribbean, sand dunes, waterfalls, Andean snow capped mountains, rain forests, chiguires,
humming birds, toucans (Venezuelanalysis.com 2017). These promotion its biological and
environmental diversity actually leads to the promotion of it’s rich social vastness and thereby
aiding its sustainability. Venezuela also promotes its culture to its visiting tourist via allowing
them to get hold a firsthand experience on salsa and hip hop, tow of the most cherished dance
style of Latin America. These two dance forms not only reflect the cultural richness of
Venezuela but also give the essence of the social diversity of the country. It has also uplifted its
tourism via enabling the option for highest teleferico in the world, mountain cable car system.
This mountain cable car system enables the tourist to view the wild beauty of Amazon while
tasting their social diversity.

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Sustainability issues from economic point of view
Venezuela had been affected with huge tourism infrastructural problems, which had
hindered the growth prospects of tourism within the country. As commented by Cheng and Wu
(2015), the infrastructural hurdle also calls for huge amount of investments from the government
or the state funds. However, the problem which is mostly encountered within the tourism
industry is drafting appropriate promotional strategies for attracting maximum number of
tourists. As mentioned by Waligo et al.(2013), tourism can be a huge contributory factor
towards the development of an economy. However, Venezuela has been lagging behind due to
lack of the sufficient expression of interest from the local government. Additionally, the increase
in the rate of crime had made Venezuela a less popular destination among the tourists. As
commented by Weaver (2014), the rate of crime such as kidnappings and robbery had increased
by almost 50% from 2008 to 2009.
The government only organised the tourism ministry of Venezuela in the year 2005,
which then founded the tourism agency ‘venetur’ (theguardian, 2017). The main aim of the
agency was to organize travel packages along with running the chain of nationalised hotels.
However, for the purpose of supporting the growth of the tourism industry sufficient amount of
funds are required. Thus, promotion of tourism helps in rolling of the funds which could be used
for further expansion of the tourism industry. As per reports in 2008, tourism made for just
3.59% of the economy. As per reports and estimates the outward bound tourism has been
comparatively greater than the inward bound tourism. However, over the last ten years the
outward bound tourism has grown by 132%, whereas the inward bound tourism has shown no

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sufficient growth (theguardian, 2017). As per the bank of Venezuela and the INE statistics, the
outward bound tourism had been more predominant resulting in a loss of 11.1 million US billion
dollars (theguardian, 2017). Therefore, tourism should be a means of enhancing the cultural
diversity of a place along with earning sufficient foreign direct investments. Therefore, the
growth of the tourism prospects of the country is poor which calls for sufficient participation
from the local and federal government.
Responses for the achievement of sustainability
In this respect the importance of sustainable tourism was pointed out at the world summit
organised by United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de
Janeiro in 2002. One of the most vital prospects which need to be aligned with tourism as
highlighted by the Convention on biological diversity (CBD) is preservation of the important
biological resources including the natural flora and fauna of the place. Thus, the policy and
guidelines propagated by a number of international conferences and agreements need to be
mentioned over here.
The International Guidelines for Biological Diversity and Tourism Development focus
on tourism which takes place in vulnerable ecosystems and in protected areas. As commented by
Stănciulescu and Diaconescu (2015), alignment of the thought process of the Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs) and the tourism industry can help in balancing the profitability ratios
along with the environmental concerns. On the other hand tourism practices such as promoting
environment friendly and biodegradable commodities which could be used by the tourists also
helps in reducing the rate of carbon emissions and thus preserving the flora and fauna of the
place.

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Conclusion
The current assignment focuses on the concept of sustainable tourism development along
with preserving the cultural values and identities of a place. For the particular assignment the
place of emphasis is Venezuela. There being a number of problems within the tourism
infrastructure of the country along with the negative international publicity due to increasing
crime rates, the tourism prospects of the country had been heavily affected. Additionally owing
to the growing environmental concerns there is a need to develop sustainable tourism outlook
and approaches which will help in preserving the biodiversity of the place.
Some of the other issues such as more outward than inward based tourisms have affected
the profitability along with the economic output of the agency. For the affective implementation
of the approaches and the policies a number of international conventions on biodiversity and
environmental safeguarding policies need to be maintained. The rich fauna and flora of a region
also serve as a major tourist attraction.

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References
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sensitivity, and place attachment affect environmentally responsible behavior? An integrated
approach for sustainable island tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 23(4), pp.557-576.
Hansen, M.C., Potapov, P.V., Moore, R., Hancher, M., Turubanova, S., Tyukavina, A., Thau, D.,
Stehman, S.V., Goetz, S.J., Loveland, T.R. and Kommareddy, A., 2013. High-resolution global
maps of 21st-century forest cover change. science, 342(6160), pp.850-853.
Laurance, W.F., 2012. Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas.
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Stănciulescu, G.C. and Diaconescu, G.N., (2015). Models and Alternative Strategies in the
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