People and Economic Activity
Evaluate the environmental, social and economic impacts of tourism at a national and global scale
Tourism is the world’s largest and fasted growing economic activity. It consists of a multitude of both positive and negative impacts on people’s lives and the biophysical environment. A suitable balance must be established between the environmental, social and economic impacts of tourism in order to ensure its long-term sustainability and in prosperity as a mutually beneficial economic activity on a global and national scale. Achieving sustainable tourism is a continuous process and it requires constant monitoring of its impacts and introducing the necessary preventive and remedial measures to ensure the economic activity is beneficial to both the host nation and tourists nationally and globally.
On a global scale tourism negatively impacts on the environment when the level of tourists is greater than the environment's capacity to cope.
In recent years the depletion of the ozone layer has been attributed to global mass tourism. Tourism has contributed to the problem directly through the construction of new developments and daily management and operations, for example the hotel industry regularly uses refrigerators, air conditioners and propellants in aerosol cans, which contain CFC’s. Similarly emissions from Jet aircraft are also a source of ozone depleting substances. It has been predicted that by 2015, half of the annual depletion of the ozone layer will be attributed to air travel.
In recent years global tourism has also been linked to climate change. Rapidly expanding air traffic has contributed to about 2.5% of the production of Carbon dioxide (Source: Mountain Forum). Thus making it a significant contributor to the increase concentrations of green house gases in the atmosphere and global warming. Air travel has also found to be a major contributor to the green house effect, with passenger jets now the fastest growing source. This problem is expected
Tourism is the world’s largest and fasted growing economic activity. It consists of a multitude of both positive and negative impacts on people’s lives and the biophysical environment. A suitable balance must be established between the environmental, social and economic impacts of tourism in order to ensure its long-term sustainability and in prosperity as a mutually beneficial economic activity on a global and national scale. Achieving sustainable tourism is a continuous process and it requires constant monitoring of its impacts and introducing the necessary preventive and remedial measures to ensure the economic activity is beneficial to both the host nation and tourists nationally and globally.
On a global scale tourism negatively impacts on the environment when the level of tourists is greater than the environment's capacity to cope.
In recent years the depletion of the ozone layer has been attributed to global mass tourism. Tourism has contributed to the problem directly through the construction of new developments and daily management and operations, for example the hotel industry regularly uses refrigerators, air conditioners and propellants in aerosol cans, which contain CFC’s. Similarly emissions from Jet aircraft are also a source of ozone depleting substances. It has been predicted that by 2015, half of the annual depletion of the ozone layer will be attributed to air travel.
In recent years global tourism has also been linked to climate change. Rapidly expanding air traffic has contributed to about 2.5% of the production of Carbon dioxide (Source: Mountain Forum). Thus making it a significant contributor to the increase concentrations of green house gases in the atmosphere and global warming. Air travel has also found to be a major contributor to the green house effect, with passenger jets now the fastest growing source. This problem is expected