What is sustainable tourism?
Tourism is one of the world’s fastest-growing and most significant industries, serving as a primary source of income for many countries. Nevertheless, like other forms of development, tourism can also cause its share of problems, including social issues, loss of cultural heritage, economic dependence, and ecological degradation.
Learning about the impacts of tourism has led many people to seek more responsible holidays. These include various forms of alternative or sustainable tourism such as: ‘nature-based tourism’, ‘ecotourism’ and ‘cultural tourism’. Sustainable tourism is becoming so popular that some say that what we presently call ‘alternative’ will be the ‘mainstream’ in a decade. Sustainable tourism, like responsible tourism, relies on the premise of taking care of the environment, society, and economy.
Sustainable tourism principles aim to minimise the negative impacts of tourism while maximising the positive effects. As the tourism industry continues to expand and evolve, it produces significant impacts on natural resources, consumption patterns, pollution and social systems. It is ironic that while tourism, in many instances, relies on the natural environment (think lying on the beach, gorilla trekking or skiing), it also destroys it.
Local Communities Benefits
Local communities benefit from sustainable tourism through economic growth, job creation, and improved infrastructure. Tourism revenues contribute to economic growth and prosperity in attractive tourist destinations, thereby enhancing the standard of living in destination communities. Sustainable tourism operators commit themselves to creating jobs for local community members. An increase in tourism revenue to an area acts as a driver for the development of increased infrastructure. As tourist demands increase in a destination, a more robust infrastructure is needed to support the needs of both the tourism industry and the local community. A 2009 study of rural operators throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada, found “an overall strong ‘pro-sustainability’ attitude among respondents. The dominant barriers identified were a lack of available funds to invest, the absence of incentive programs, other business priorities, and limited access to suppliers of sustainable products. The most common recommendation was the need for incentive programs to encourage businesses to become more sustainable.
Is sustainable tourism sustainable?
Let’s start with a harsh truth: if we continue to travel as unsustainable as we always have, we will destroy the world we live in. Something must be done, and this is where sustainable tourism comes in. It is defined as a form of tourism that involves travelling to a destination as a tourist while trying to have a positive impact on the environment and respecting the destination’s culture, environment, and local communities.
Negative impacts of tourism:
- Damage to the landscape: litter, erosion, fires, disturbance to livestock, vandalism
- Traffic congestion and pollution
- Local goods can become expensive because tourists will pay more
- Shops stock products for tourists and not everyday goods needed by locals
- Demand for holiday homes makes housing too expensive for local people
- Demand for the development of more shops and hotels
- Jobs are mainly seasonal, low-paid, and with extended hours
Sustainable Travel in Tanzania
The beauty and wonder of Tanzania are truly legendary. Of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa, three (Mount Kilimanjaro, the Ngorongoro Crater, and the Serengeti wildlife migration) are found in this single dazzling country spanning from the Swahili Coast across forests and savannas to the shores of Lake Tanganyika. But despite its striking aesthetics and abundant natural resources, Tanzania has its challenges.
A Tanzania safari, a Kilimanjaro trek, or a visit to exotic Zanzibar is a dream for travellers around the world, and the tourism industry is a powerful and growing asset to promote the well-being of this captivating nation, as well as its people. Growing right alongside it, however, is the need for more sustainable travel practices that ensure maximum benefits for residents and travellers, the local economy, and the environment, as well as our planet as a whole. Sustainable travel and development are not new ideas by any means, and they go hand in hand — the latter having been first described in 1987 in Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report.
As the document states, “Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Sustainable tourism, like any sustainable business endeavour, balances economic, social, and environmental needs to comprise a “triple bottom line,” as opposed to the more conventional business bottom line of maximum fiscal profit. This concept is becoming an ethical choice for all businesses that care about creating a positive global future, and it’s rapidly gaining popularity.
Tourism operators in East Africa and around the world inherently rely on robust local economic infrastructure, intact and vibrant traditional cultures, and an ecologically sound natural environment for their success. Locally run and managed initiatives that advocate for place-based culture and enterprises built on ethical business practices are emerging more frequently, enabling more responsible and sustainable tourism and travel.
The consequences of tourism for sustainable water use on a tropical island: Tanzania
Many developing countries in the tropics have focused on tourism as a means to generate additional income sources and diversify their economies. Coastlines, in particular, have been at the forefront of tourist infrastructure development. Here, the presence of a large number of tourists has often had negative consequences for the sustainable use of available resources, which in turn has affected the integrity of the ecosystems. In this paragraph, the situation regarding the use of freshwater resources in Tanzania is described. This region is water-poor, relying on freshwater derived from seasonal rains and stored in less efficient aquifers, which consist of freshwater lenses floating on the underlying seawater.
Tourism in the area has experienced rapid growth in recent years and is expected to continue increasing in the future. This development is expected to put additional pressure on the freshwater resources of the East Coast, which are already showing signs of overuse. The consequences of over-exploitation can include the lowering of the groundwater table, land subsidence, deteriorating groundwater quality, and saltwater intrusion. These, in turn, determine the living conditions in coastal areas, and the effects will be felt by both the local populations and the tourist industry. An investigation is made into the causes and consequences of water abstraction by the tourist industry. The results indicate that current levels of withdrawal are unsustainable, and parts of the local population are already experiencing daily water deficits. In the future, if the expected increase in tourist numbers occurs, the pressure on the aquifers will correspondingly increase. The results could be that tourism in the area becomes unsustainable, which could harm the national economy, the local population, and the environment. Therefore, a precautionary approach to water management is suggested.
In some developing countries, local communities at tourist destinations, such as all safari parks in Tanzania, often do not benefit directly from tourism, which is one of the main challenges for these communities. Many tourist operations do not contribute to the regional development of the country’s industries and businesses, as the majority of the tour payments. It remains with Western tour agencies, and in developing countries, they may only provide the necessary services (for example, water).
Additionally, in many cases, tourists rarely interact with local people and societies during their safari trip. Sometimes, when they meet local people, it is because they are visiting a Maasai village as part of a short tourism introduction to see how “African people” live for photo shoots.
Way to build up a plan for sustainable tourism
To enhance the success of sustainable tourism in Tanzania, stakeholders should develop a sustainable tourism strategic plan to provide direction, vision, and strategic alternatives for the systems. Furthermore, the strategic plan must be implemented.
Secondly, stakeholders within the sustainable tourism framework must ensure adequate exposure, publicity, awareness, education, and training for the community and other stakeholders, and undertake efforts to enhance the success rates of sustainable tourism.
Finally, there should be increased community participation in the development and implementation of sustainable tourism. Furthermore, the government should offer incentives, such as subsidies and tax holidays, to enhance the success of sustainable tourism. Additionally, a reward management system should be introduced to recognise exemplary performers in sustainable tourism.
