"Sustainable tourism can result in positive impacts for biodiversity conservation. There can be no doubt that tourism and biodiversity are closely interrelated."I'm not entirely sure about the second half that sentence; I know that much tourism is strongly linked to biological diversity (SSSI, protected areas, some islands or beaches, coral reefs, wildlife viewing etc.) but has anyone done any work studying the negative impacts of all the 'footprints' made whilst doing this tourism. I'm sure they have, yet the one and only common factor IMHO in the loss/damage to ecosystems is us: humans. An agricultural landscape is it's own ecosystem, so are cities and "biodiversity" is the variety of ecosystems interacting with one another but when humans form part of the community bad things start to happen. All the biodiversity, green issues, air, water, soil, mountains, deserts, oceans, lakes, rivers, plains, wetlands, forests, woods...loving the planet etc will all come to nothing if the one problem overriding all others isn't dealt with: human population and feeding it*; the year global human population reached one billion is estimated to have been 1804; since then - naturally! - the number of years between billions has shrunk alarmingly: "two billion in 1927 (est), three billion in 1960, four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, and six billion in 1999"...you see the very clear pattern.
* I have no doubt that we WILL be able feed it; that isn't the issue.
2 comments:
I've been critical of the way the New Forest is looked after but in many ways it's similar to what Spain has done for many years - keep the people in one area, let them wear out that bit and don't let them anywhere near the rest.
Everything needs water and light to flourish, there's no shortage of either but it's the management of those resources.
I agree in some respects...especially where it's reasonably easy but many places (reefs, Galapogos Is, top of Everest etc) it becomes a lot harder! I guess my example of Everest actually fits your comment: it means that several of the "lesser" peaks get far less attention.
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