An Examination of Tourism's Environmental Footprint and Ecotourism

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of the environmental impacts of tourism. It begins by highlighting tourism's role as a significant industry with both positive and negative effects on the environment. The essay primarily focuses on the negative consequences, including depletion of natural resources like water, degradation of land due to construction, and various forms of pollution (air, noise, solid waste, sewage, and aesthetic). It then introduces ecotourism as a potential solution, defining it as a form of sustainable tourism that respects nature, benefits local communities, and promotes environmental conservation. The essay outlines the principles and benefits of ecotourism, such as minimizing impacts, raising awareness, providing financial benefits, and creating memorable experiences. The conclusion emphasizes the need to address the environmental challenges posed by uncontrolled tourism and the importance of adopting sustainable practices to protect natural resources.

Running head: ESSAY
Essay
Name of the Student:
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Author Note:

1ESSAY
Introduction:
The report aims at providing an overview on tourism. People undertake an activity for
pleasure as well as business. Tourism is considered one of the important businesses that have
an impact on the built and the physical environment of a country. The desire of people for
undertaking adventure and the yearning of discovering places of cultural and natural
significance along with intrigue or beauty drives tourism. The inherent irony of the tourism
concept is often the precise values that become threatened by the number of visitors seeking
in exploring them. It is therefore essential to understand the impacts that tourism has on the
environment that can be either positive or negative. The report here focuses on the negative
impacts of tourism in the light of the impacts that it had both on the natural and the built
environment. The report also puts forward the emergence of the ecotourism and the role it has
in providing a solution to the environment.
Discussion:
Negative Impacts of Tourism with Examples
The negative impacts of tourism takes place when level of visitor usage remains
greater than the ability of the environment in coping with the use within acceptable limits of
the change.
Depletion of the Natural Resources:
Water Resource comprising of fresh water represents one of the critical natural
resources (Black, 2016). Tourism is found to over use water resources for the hotels,
maintenance of the golf courses, swimming pools and the personal water usage by the tourist
that resulted in the degradation and the shortage of water supplies. For example, maintenance
of golf courses requires huge water resources on a day-to-day basis that might result in its
scarcity. Tourism also leads to the depletion of natural resource like food, energy and other

2ESSAY
raw materials for meeting the higher expectations of the tourists (Sajjad, Noreen & Zaman,
2014). Degradation of land is caused due to the increase in tourism construction and the
recreational facilities (Garcia, Vazquez and Macias 2015). This emergence of such facilities
has created enhanced pressure on the scenic landscapes and the natural resources like fertile
soil, forest, fossil fuel, wildlife and the wetlands.
Tourism Causes Pollution
Tourist transportation had been a cause of air pollution at the local and global due to
the emission of level of carbon dioxide (Saenz & Rossello, 2014). For example, in the hot
and the cold countries the tour buses keep the motors running for hours to keep the air
conditions even when the tourists are out for excursion. Besides the sounds from buses, cars,
airplanes and other recreational vehicles like the jet skis and snowmobiles cause immense
amount of noise pollution (Ozkurt et al., 2014). In addition to this, they might also cause
stress, annoyance, hearing loss in humans along with an immense distress to wildlife. For
example, the noise caused by the snowmobiles leads alternation in the activity patterns of the
animals. In areas that have a higher concentration of the tourist activity, solid waste and
littering has been a major problem that acts a despoiler to natural environment like scenic
areas, rivers and the roadsides (Poeta, Battisti & Acosta, 2014). For example, the cruise ships
of the Caribbean produces an estimated waste of 70,000 tons every year. Mountain trekking
undertaken by tourists also generates waste. Besides, the construction of the recreation, hotels
and the other facilities has led to the increase in the sewage pollution (Lamb et al., 2014).
For example, wastewater has led to the pollution of the lakes and the seas surrounding the
tourist destinations thereby causing damage to the flora and the fauna. The sewage runoff
leads to immense damage of the coral reefs as it stimulates the algae growth that covers filter-
feeding corals thereby causing a hindrance to their survival. Tourism also leads to aesthetic
pollution as it experiences a failure in integrating the structures with indigenous architecture

3ESSAY
and the natural features of the concerned destination (McLachlan et al., 2013). Dominating
and large resort structures having dissimilar designs might look inappropriate in any of the
natural environment causing a clash with the original structural design.
Ecotourism and its Contribution in Environment Conservation
Ecotourism also known as sustainable tourism is defined through various travel
practices (Chiu, Lee & Chen, 2014). An eco tourist can decide his or her travel in a manner
that respects the nature and does not contribute to environmental degradation. Therefore,
ecotourism is considered part of environmental conservation and understands the needs of
local people thereby helping them in improving the quality of the life. Ecotourism also
involves learning about history of the other cities and subsequent conservation of the
historical landmarks.
In other words, ecotourism deals with uniting the communities, their conservation and
the sustainable travel. There are certain principles to be adopted by those who participates,
implements and markets activities related to ecotourism. This includes, minimizing the social,
physical, behavioural and the psychological impacts. It also helps in building cultural and
environmental awareness and respect. Ecotourism also results in positive experiences of both
the hosts and the visitors thereby providing direct financial benefits for the purpose of
conservation. It also resulted in the financial benefits of the private industry and the local
people. Ecotourism also results in delivering the memorable and interactive experiences to
the visitors thereby helping in raising the sensitivity of the host country in terms of
environmental, political and social climates. The concept also helps in designing,
constructing and operating facilities having lower impact. Lastly, ecotourism also helps in
recognizing the spiritual beliefs and the rights of the native people in the community and
enables working in partnership for creating empowerment.

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Conclusion:
On a concluding note, it can be said that Tourism is considered as collection of
activities as well as services and industries that delivers a travel experience that comprises of
accommodation, transportation, drinking and eating establishments along with hospitality
services provided to the groups or individuals away from the home. Conventional tourism
that remains uncontrolled poses as threat to various natural resources across the world. It
however puts enormous pressure on the area thereby leading to impacts like social erosion,
increase in pollution, discharge to the sea, loss of the natural habitat, enhanced pressure on
the endangered species and a heightened vulnerability to the forest fires. There is also an
increased strain on the water resources and the local populations are forced to compete for
getting a share of the critical resources.

5ESSAY
References:
Black, M. (2016). The atlas of water: mapping the World's most critical resource. Univ of
California Press.
Chiu, Y. T. H., Lee, W. I., & Chen, T. H. (2014). Environmentally responsible behavior in
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García, F. A., Vázquez, A. B., & Macías, R. C. (2015). Resident's attitudes towards the
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Lamb, J. B., True, J. D., Piromvaragorn, S., & Willis, B. L. (2014). Scuba diving damage and
intensity of tourist activities increases coral disease prevalence. Biological
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McLachlan, A., Defeo, O., Jaramillo, E., & Short, A. D. (2013). Sandy beach conservation
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Ozkurt, N., Sari, D., Akdag, A., Kutukoglu, M., & Gurarslan, A. (2014). Modeling of noise
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Poeta, G., Battisti, C., & Acosta, A. T. (2014). Marine litter in Mediterranean sandy littorals:
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Saenz-de-Miera, O., & Rosselló, J. (2014). Modeling tourism impacts on air pollution: The
case study of PM10 in Mallorca. Tourism Management, 40, 273-281.

6ESSAY
Sajjad, F., Noreen, U., & Zaman, K. (2014). Climate change and air pollution jointly creating
nightmare for tourism industry. Environmental Science and Pollution
Research, 21(21), 12403-12418.