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Tourism a hugh threat to world's ecosystems
(12 September 2003)
By Ed Stoddard
REUTERS
DURBAN, South Africa - A boom in world tourism
is posing a huge threat to some of the planet's most sensitive ecosystems,
according to a study released Friday.
The study, by Conservation International (CI)
and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), said tourism rose
by more than 100 percent between 1990 and 2000 in the world's "biodiversity
hotspots," which include the tropical Andes and the Guinean forests
of West Africa.
CI has identified 25 such areas, which contain
44 percent of all identified endemic plant species and 35 percent of
all known endemic species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians.
The hotspots cover only 1.4 percent of the planet's
land area and all been significantly altered by human activities.
"In some places the growth (in tourism) has
been staggering," CI and UNEP said in a statement released at the fifth
World Parks Congress in the South African port city of Durban.
"Over the past decade, tourism has increased
by more than 200 percent in both Laos and Cambodia, nearly 500 percent
in South Africa, (and) over 300 percent in the countries of Brazil,
Nicaragua and El Salvador," it said.
Costas Christ of CI, one of the report's authors,
told Reuters tourist development in ecologically sensitive areas often
severely damages its main attraction - the environment.
"Many of these developments are in arid countries
and so the limited water supply comes under pressure ... and if development
ultimately kills off the environment then tourists have no incentive
to come," he said.
The report highlighted the Mexican resort of
Cancun, where world trade talks are being held, as an example of unsustainable
tourism which is impacting negatively on the environment.
"Prior to its development as a tourist resort
in the 1970s, only 12 families lived on the barrier island of Cancun," it
said.
Now, the resort has 2.6 million visitors per
year, the local mangrove and inland forests have been cut down, and
in the settlement that has grown nearby, 75 percent of the sewage of
the population is untreated.
Tourism is often said to benefit the environment
by creating jobs and other opportunities for poor rural communities
who might otherwise exploit local natural resources for survival.
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