TOURISM MATTERS | Episode 03: Impacts of Overtourism
Summary
TLDRThis episode of 'Tourism Matters' explores the issue of overtourism, focusing on its environmental, infrastructural, and community impacts. Environmental planner and lawyer Mark Evidente emphasizes the importance of sustainable tourism through careful planning, managing visitor impacts, and fostering community participation. He highlights strategies such as limiting resource use, improving infrastructure, and respecting local cultures. The discussion underscores the need for government and businesses to collaborate on responsible practices, especially in light of climate change, aiming for a future where tourism benefits local communities while preserving the environment.
Takeaways
- 📈 Over-tourism refers to the negative impacts of excessive tourism on communities, the environment, and infrastructure.
- 🌱 Sustainable tourism requires proactive planning, community involvement, and proper management to mitigate negative effects.
- 🏗️ Infrastructure, such as water, power, and sewage systems, must be adequate to handle the number of tourists to prevent environmental degradation.
- 👥 Community engagement is essential; local communities should benefit from tourism rather than be inconvenienced or marginalized.
- 📉 Carrying capacity is a critical measure that indicates when a destination has reached or surpassed its sustainable tourism limit.
- 🚫 Limiting tourist numbers through permits or fees can help manage over-tourism and reduce environmental impacts.
- 🏛️ Coordination between government, industry, and academia is necessary to develop effective sustainable tourism policies and practices.
- 🔄 Responsible business practices are needed to balance economic growth with environmental protection and community well-being.
- ♻️ Reducing single-use plastics and conserving local resources are practical steps tourists can take to lessen their environmental impact.
- 🏡 Tourism should enhance and respect local cultural identity, providing jobs and supporting the community’s heritage and way of life.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the 'Tourism Matters' program?
-The 'Tourism Matters' program explores issues about tourism and emphasizes why tourism is an important part of our lives. It focuses on topics such as tourism policy and governance, education and human resource capacity, and the tourism industry market and enterprise.
What is the concept of 'over-tourism' as discussed in the episode?
-'Over-tourism' refers to the negative impacts of tourism, including overcrowding, environmental damage, and social exclusion. It emphasizes the need to manage tourism to reduce its harmful effects on the environment, infrastructure, and local communities.
How is over-tourism related to infrastructure challenges?
-Over-tourism can strain infrastructure by overwhelming water, power, and sewage systems. Insufficient infrastructure can lead to problems like excessive water use and unprocessed waste, which negatively impact both the environment and local communities.
What is the significance of carrying capacity in tourism management?
-Carrying capacity indicates the maximum number of tourists an area can handle without suffering negative effects. It helps determine whether a destination is reaching or has reached a point of over-tourism, guiding planners to make decisions that prevent excessive impact.
What is a proactive approach to dealing with over-tourism?
-A proactive approach involves having a comprehensive plan that includes community engagement, environmental protection, infrastructure planning, and expert input. It requires regular forums for dialogue between communities, decision-makers, and experts to assess tourism’s impact.
How can tourism minimize its environmental impact?
-Tourism can minimize its environmental impact by reducing the use of single-use plastics, conserving water, implementing zoning regulations to limit access to sensitive areas, and upgrading infrastructure like sewage and water systems to handle increased tourist numbers.
Why is community engagement crucial in managing over-tourism?
-Community engagement ensures that locals benefit from tourism, such as by securing jobs and being consulted on new projects. It also helps ensure that tourism development respects local cultures and traditions, promoting a sense of pride and identity within the community.
What role does the government play in managing over-tourism?
-The government plays a key role in promoting responsible tourism practices, creating policies that address environmental challenges like climate change, and working alongside businesses to ensure sustainability. They also set regulations and enforcement mechanisms to manage tourism impact.
How can tourist destinations enforce responsible tourism practices?
-Destinations can enforce responsible tourism by limiting the number of tourists through permits, charging fees for access to specific areas, and using these fees to fund environmental management. Such regulations help control the impact of large tourist volumes.
What steps can be taken to improve the quality of life for host communities affected by tourism?
-To improve the quality of life for host communities, tourism should generate local jobs, respect local culture, and ensure the community actively benefits from tourism developments. This includes preserving cultural identity and ensuring communities are involved in decision-making processes.
Outlines
🎥 Introduction to Tourism Matters and Over Tourism
This paragraph introduces 'Tourism Matters,' a program exploring various issues surrounding tourism. The series covers topics like tourism policy, governance, education, and industry challenges, with a focus on over-tourism. It defines over-tourism as the negative impact of excessive tourism, including environmental degradation, overcrowding, and social exclusion. The episode features Mark Evidente, an environmental planner and lawyer, who discusses mitigating these impacts to create more sustainable and inclusive tourism practices.
🌍 Addressing the Environmental, Infrastructure, and Community Impact of Over Tourism
Mark Evidente explains the multifaceted impact of over-tourism on the environment, infrastructure, and host communities. He highlights how tourism can affect natural areas, strain infrastructure like water and sewage systems, and influence the well-being of local communities. He emphasizes the need for proactive destination management and planning to handle both the number and impact of tourists. Over-tourism isn't just about the quantity of tourists but also their unmanaged impact on the locality.
🛠️ The Role of Holistic Planning in Sustainable Tourism
This paragraph emphasizes the importance of a holistic plan for sustainable tourism development. Evidente explains that successful tourism planning must involve experts, decision-makers, and local communities. He stresses the role of infrastructure planning, environmental zoning, and community engagement in avoiding over-tourism. The concept of 'carrying capacity' is highlighted as a key indicator to prevent over-tourism, urging localities to avoid responding to tourism demands in an unstructured or 'organic' manner.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Overtourism
💡Sustainability
💡Carrying capacity
💡Infrastructure
💡Community involvement
💡Tourism policy
💡Destination management
💡Environmental impact
💡Responsible business practices
💡Climate change
Highlights
Tourism matters is a program that explores issues about tourism and why tourism is an important part of our lives.
The series focuses on three main topics: tourism policy and governance, tourism education and human resource capacity, and tourism industry market and enterprise.
Overtourism first appeared on social media in 2012, referring to the negative impacts of tourism and host communities' resistance to excessive visitors.
Overtourism highlights the dark side of tourism, including overcrowding, pollution, and social exclusion.
Environmental planner and attorney Mark Evidente explains that overtourism is not just about the number of tourists but also their impact on the environment, infrastructure, and local communities.
A key aspect of overtourism is the lack of planning and poor destination management, which can lead to a strain on local infrastructure and resources.
Overtourism requires a holistic approach to planning that includes not only economic considerations but also environmental and social factors.
Carrying capacity is crucial in determining when a destination reaches the point of overtourism, as it provides indicators for environmental, infrastructural, and community stress.
Mark Evidente emphasizes the need for a proactive plan that involves the community, scientists, engineers, and urban planners in addressing overtourism's impacts.
Tourism strategies can include limiting single-use plastics, reducing water usage, and managing visitor interactions with sensitive cultural or natural sites.
Community engagement in tourism planning is essential to ensure locals benefit from tourism development, including job creation and cultural preservation.
Environmental zoning is crucial to manage where tourists can go and what activities they can do in specific areas to minimize environmental impact.
Infrastructure development must anticipate the arrival of tourists and be designed to handle increasing numbers in a sustainable manner.
There are concrete steps that can be taken to manage overtourism, including introducing permits or fees to limit the number of visitors in specific locations.
Mark Evidente stresses the importance of collaboration between the government, business sector, and community to promote responsible tourism and address environmental challenges, particularly in the face of climate change.
Transcripts
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hi there welcome to tourism matters a
program that explores issues about
tourism and white tourism is an
important part of our lives this brought
to you by you Pai T and T V u P tourism
matters tackle broad topics and are
divided into three series number one
tourism policy and governance with a
specific focus on issue on over tourism
number two tourism education and human
resource capacity and number three
tourism industry market and enterprise
we hope you find the series interesting
educational and fun in this series
leading experts in tourism share their
thoughts on our tourism a term that
first appeared on social media in 2012
to denote the negative impacts of
tourism and the social movements
associated with hostert agonism to too
many guests over tourism has come to
mean the dark side of tourism
overcrowding pollution and social
exclusion in this episode we invited
environmental planner attorney mark
evident a lecturer from the University
of the Philippines to share his thoughts
on how to mitigate against the negative
impacts of tourism and make it more
sustainable and inclusive
I'm mark Richard evidently I'm an
environmental planner and lawyer and
president of to echo incorporated
sustainability consultants when we talk
about over tourism we're not just
talking about the numbers of tourists
we're talking about their impact and
we're talking about the impact on the
environment on infrastructure and on the
community when we talk about the
environment we see the impact of
tourists in terms of how they interfere
with the environment or what they draw
from the environment so for instance if
it's a sensitive area like a forest or
not for a natural park it tourists can
actually enter the area and have very
little impact on it but they can also
enter and have a lot of impact and then
that would be a situation of over to the
same second one would be about the
infrastructure so we can have a lot of
tourists and then there is no sufficient
infrastructure in terms of water power
and sewage and so what happens is that
we draw too much water or they produce
too much sewage that it's not a that
it's not processed by the natural
environment in a proper way and then
there's and then we so there's a need
for infrastructure in that case that
needs to be upgraded and then when you
talk about community of course there's a
host community that's affected by
tourism does the community benefit from
the tourists that enter or are they
inconvenienced or put at a disadvantage
because of tourism so these are the
kinds of things that we have to think
about when we talk about the idea of
over tourism so I said earlier it's not
just about too many tourists but about
their impact and then so there is an
aspect about numbers and impact and the
second aspect is that it is also about
lack of planning and poor destination
management because even if you have a
lot of plans and well-made plans at that
but if there is simply too many tourists
that arrive in a particular area then
you do have over tourism but of course
it's also the situation in which you
don't have plans and you don't have
destination manage
and so any number of tourists really
stretch the ability of the environment
the community and infrastructure to deal
with over tourism okay so yes people
were aware about over tourism but I
think for a long time the understanding
of tourism was mainly from an economic
point of view in terms of what jobs it
would generate or what what income would
be generated for a community or locality
but I think one of the one of the things
that came up with this administration
was that there is a shift towards
looking at tourism and more holistic
sense although the idea of sustainable
tourism has been there at least
officially as a policy statement as
early as 2009 with the enactment of the
tourism map of 2009 but I think over the
last decade this administration has led
the shift towards sustainability of
course this is early in the process of
moving toward sustainability but it's
good to see government leading the
charge and it would be good also to see
more conversations between government
and the academia and other stakeholders
and truly coming up with a good formula
for sustainability for our country
I think being proactive really starts
with having a plan and the plan is not
simply about having or identifying the
infrastructure that needs to be built or
what kinds of designs it needs to look
at we need to have a plan that really
looks at the problem in a holistic way
that it deals with the community it
brings and creates a regular forum for
the community to interact with other
decision-makers and so they can
regularly have a conversation about
whether the community or the locality is
deal is now reaching a point of over
tourism and it's not simply about also
the community and decision-makers you
also need to bring in experts you need
to bring in scientists for example to
measure the impact on the environment
you need to bring in engineers and
architects and urban planners to talk
about and examine whether the
infrastructure needs to be enhanced or
upgraded to deal with tourism
development the two concepts carrying
capacity and over tourism
related in the sense that carrying
capacity provides us an indicator
whether a place has switched the point
of over tourism it's crucial that a
destination needs to have a plan we
cannot deal with to resume on an organic
or in evolutionary way now they can't
just like respond to to the needs
because in one year you'll have hundreds
of thousands of people or maybe even
millions of visitors arrived in a
particular area and a town or a city
cannot simply adapt to that in an
organic fashion there has to be a plan
and the plan starts if we talk about the
different elements of over tourism so
first let's talk about impact so what
kind of strategies can we put in place
so that tourists can reduce their impact
so one simple thing can be like limiting
the use of plastics limiting the use of
disposable single-use plastics and other
items now so that reduces the impact of
waste and trash in the environment also
tourists can learn to use less of water
or use less of other resources in a
particular area so one is impact the
second is the environment in managing
the impact on the environment zoning is
crucial we need to identify areas where
people are allowed in what pivot these
people can can do in a particular area
but as they enter deeper into a
particular environment or a particular
cultural area we need to also find out
or limit the level in which people
interact with that environment because
that would seriously impact on the
natural condition or the cultural
significance of a particular site so in
terms of infrastructure then that needs
to be planned that needs to be
forecasted and and designed ahead of the
tourists arriving so if a particular
locality is seeing so many thousands of
tourists arriving in a particular year
then you need to start upgrading the
number of
hotels the kind of sewage system that
they have the kind of water system that
they have it has to be done in an
organized and rational manner and if we
talk about the community how can we
ensure that the community is properly
engaged in tourism does the community
benefit in a concrete way like our jobs
really generated for the community or
are they simply the background to all
this development that's going on or are
is the community regularly consulted on
new projects that are undertaken by the
local government or by investors so if
we think about over iteration there are
very concrete steps that we can do in
terms of impact environment
infrastructure and community of course
other other localities have gone as far
as limiting the number of people that
enter our particular area by by
introducing permits or in others is
applying fees that only certain people
who pay the fees can enter a particular
area and all these help minimize impact
and a lot of places in which fees are
collected those fees go in turn to go go
and in turn help in managing the
environmental impact in a particular
site so there are a lot of measures that
Canada that the destination can take and
it begins really with planning and it
leads to regulation and enforcement
definitely the government and industry
terms itself you know it should really
work they should work hand-in-hand to
promote responsible business practices I
think if we really think about the two
things that we have that the two urgent
needs in our country that we have one is
the need of course will develop and then
the second is the seriousness of climate
change and other environmental problems
there is really no other choice but for
government and business to work together
in order to come up with responsible
business practices for the community and
for the environment
I think the seriousness of climate
change for instance if we really think
about it we really need to buckle down
and address these problems within the
next five to ten years a lot of
countries are aiming to be zero or
rather carbon neutral by 2040 or 2050
how far are we along that path you know
because there can be no future unless
it's a future that's sustainable to
improve a community's quality of life
one of the things that tourism must do
whether from government or the private
sector is to make sure that a host
community really benefits from tourism
the first thing really is that to make
sure that most of the jobs generated by
tourism really go to locals of the
community right so at least that
produces the possibility or the tendency
of people to migrate from outside the
community and further stress the
infrastructure or the community's own
ability to cope with outsiders okay and
then second is that tourism can find
ways in fact of respecting the local
community's identity so if we're talking
about a particular locality that has a
particular product or a particular
cultural practices then that can in fact
be enhanced and integrated into tourism
activities so at least even the
community starts being more proud about
their identity or more and they start to
cherish their own cultural or social
identity more from these things now so
these are just two quick things that
need to be done and these are things
that I readily implementable now episode
3 clarified that over tourism is that
simply a tourism only problem community
participation respect for and
preservation of local culture planning
managing visitor impacts and observing
physical carrying capacity hold the key
to a more sustainable tourism
development
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