Tourism's Impact on the Environment and Local Communities

I have begun to read on tourism's impact on the environment and local communities. Found these beginning steps in the context of tourism in the USA, but applicable anywhere.. atleast these need to be part of the ethos of all travellers anywhere. 

The Audubon Society has recognized the potential for adverse effects of tourism, and has developed a “Travel Ethic” for tour operators that provide wilderness trips. The Travel Ethic encourages tour operators and cruises to stay on trails to protect vegetation, keep a minimum distance from wildlife, refrain from destruction of coral reefs, maintain and enforce an anti-dumping policy, and educate tourists about the types of souvenirs not to buy (such as sea turtle products and ivory). 

The Sierra Club also educates its members on methods to minimize their impact on the environment. The club’s concern about the potential impact of member travelers on the environment started as early as 1970, when its leaders commissioned a report from three professors about any adverse impacts Sierra outings had, and how they could be mitigated. These “Wilderness Manners” include traveling on durable surfaces, camping away from water bodies and trails, reducing litter by repackaging used food and carrying out all trash and garbage, minimizing use and impact of fires, and respecting wildlife and other travelers. 

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) uses the trips it sponsors as a way of fulfilling one of the tenets of ecotourism: using tourism to support conservation. The WWF attempts to minimize the environmental impacts of their trips by selecting commercial tour operators according to their reputation as environmentally friendly.

The report speaks of this : Three examples of tourist infrastructure that minimize environmental impact and incorporate local people’s needs are two eco-resorts in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and a riverfront park in Detroit, Michigan. 

Maho Bay Camps and Harmony Resort were built in the 1970s, and are two of the best known and successful eco-resorts. Wooden walkways minimize soil erosion and vegetation damage from trampling. Communal toilets and captured rainwater reduce water usage, and reliance on solar and wind power along with computer monitoring of electricity and water use help reduce energy use. 

The “Detroit Linked Riverfront Parks Plan” is a good example of effective tourism planning. In lieu of indiscriminate development based solely on economics, planners first determined the needs of the local people, and then designed the area accordingly.

Sectors of the tourism industry have the opportunity to “channel” activities of both
tourists and employees toward more environmentally responsible activities. This type of
influence has been termed “downstream” leverage. The lodging industry exerts downstream influence on tourists by encouraging environmentally sound practices. Ramada International Hotels and Resorts distributed 20,000 copies of “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth” to guests as a method to encourage environmentally responsible behavior. 

It has been suggested that an effective way to implement changes favorable to the environment is by starting with hotel employees in areas such as laundry, housekeeping, and engineering (Shanklin, et al., 1991, p. 65). These employees have first direct contact with some aspects of the hotel business that have an impact on the environment (such as washing linen and sheets).

There are also efforts in place to minimize water use. 77% of U.S. hotels use low flow shower-heads, and 33% use low consumption toilets. However only 4% of hotels reclaim their laundry wastewater, and 2% use their gray water for irrigation, as of 1990.

Royal Caribbean Cruises is an example of a cruise line using leverage with suppliers to encourage use of products that minimize environmental impact. Through a Quality Supplier Development Program, the cruise line has convinced suppliers to reduce packaging and substitute more environmentally benign materials. In the last five years they have reduced packaging by 35% through several different routes including ordering ketchup and chili sauce in 5-gallon pouches instead of tin cans, ordering some beer in kegs rather than cans, putting fountain syrup in 5-gallon boxed bags, which saves 250,000 syrup cans annually, and purchasing soda in cans without plastic rings.

Decreasing water availability and growing demands due to climate change and increasing tourist numbers in the Mediterranean basin are likely to result in worsening conflicts between socioeconomic sectors that depend on water to survive. In a study, hotel size, category, and year of construction/renovation were all directly associated with the implementation or lack of implementation of certain water-saving measures.

The hoteliers did not perceive any strong incentives to adopt water-saving measures, but there were clear indications of cost and technical barriers and a lack of awareness about possible options.

Hotels with more rooms, more stars, and more services tend to consume more water.

The most widely implemented water-saving measures by the hotels surveyed were low-cost, low-tech, and legally enforceable measures. The main measures were dual-flush toilet systems and improved towel and bed linen reuse policies (both present in 78.9% of hotels) and faucet sensors, timers, or aerators (73.7%).

In regard to hotels with swimming pools, the most common measure was the installation of shower sensors or timers (71%). Of the six hotels with gardens, 4 (66%) had installed more efficient irrigation systems (sprinkler or computerized irrigation systems), and just two (16.7%) had planted native or drought-tolerant plants. None of the hotels had replaced lawns with paving or synthetic grass. The maintenance of natural lawns requires large volumes of water as they are typically composed of non-native grasses.

Overall, just 42.1% of hoteliers stated that their workers received training on water-saving practices, whether in the form of specific programs or informal training by the owners or managers. All the large hotels and some of the medium-sized hotels provided training and the hoteliers were of the opinion that this was crucial for helping to save water and reduce operating costs.

It is noteworthy that 77% of hotel managers stated that all the measures implemented had been effective and had resulted in a real reduction in water consumption.

None of the hotels had introduced systems for gray-water reuse, rainwater harvesting, water consumption monitoring in key areas, or leak detection. All four measures require greater investment and technical knowledge and have a longer payback period.

There was a lack of awareness about water shortage problems and their potential impact on hotels in the future: Almost 60% of those interviewed were of the opinion that their hotel did not have water problems and believed that this would continue to be the case. They were also unaware that the implementation of water-saving and efficiency measures could be both beneficial for the environment and profitable for their business.

Barriers related to marketing and publicity were mentioned by several managers. In particular, faucet flow restrictors, bathtub-to-shower conversions, and towel and bed linen reuse programs were perceived as measures that could lead to a loss of business.

Those interviewed suggested various ideas, including technical training for owners and managers.

BJP's narrow focus on environment and over-reach on the International Solar Alliance

The BJPs guide for environmental management in its 2014 manifesto for the general election, interestingly, finds mention under the subject “industry” instead of “Flora, Fauna and Environment”. The emphasis on framing of environmental laws in a manner that encourages speedy clearances, removal of red tape and bottlenecks, is a sure indicator of diluted scrutiny of development projects at the time of clearance.

The BJP manifesto further focuses on the management of natural resources with respect to more marketable commodities which can earn high returns, such as coal and minerals. Natural resources such as forests and water barely find mention.

But it did have the right words for responding to climate change : One earth, green earth: Creating the right environment - BJP would pursue national growth objectives through an ecological sustainable pathway that leads to mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, recognizing that containing global warming is essential to protecting life and security of people and environment.

India took a lead in the International Solar Alliance (ISA), launched at the Paris climate change conference in 2015. Headquartered in Gurgaon and with 75 signatory countries, the ISA will help in the transfer of solar technologies across members. ISA’s mission is to undertake joint efforts required to reduce the cost of finance and the cost of technology, and mobilise more than $1,000 billion of investments needed by 2030 for massive deployment of solar energy. But expert opinion says the ISA has not achieved much - It has not had any impact, good or bad, on the Indian solar sector. It is more of a public relation exercise at this point.

Before the launch of the ISA, there already was a Global Solar Council from 2012 with much the same objectives and membership of a large no. of countries.

Modi said in Oct 2018 that : "Today ISA has become big hope for people. In three years, it has become an inter-governmental organisation. 125 crore Indians feel pride that ISA is headquartered in India. I think whenever people would discuss a big organisation for human development then ISA would to on the top of the list. Whatever role OPEC is playing today to meet the energy requirement of the world, that would be played by ISA in coming days."

Modi's statements in regard to ISA show how much of an over-reach his volubility is - there is no relationship with facts on the ground. ISA is a good initiative on renewal energy, but it is just one more alongside many others in the world. Moreover it hasnt even taken off, much less to be spoken about in these seemingly false terms. 

The Story of Rice..

Rice is the world’s most important food. More than half of the world’s population depends on rice for food calories and protein, especially in developing countries.

According to the Economic Survey 2015-2016, in wheat, India's average yield in 2013 of 3075 kg/ha is lower than the world average of 3257 kg/ha. The picture is starker in paddy production where all Indian states have yields below that of China and most states have yields below that of Bangladesh. India's best state, Punjab, has paddy yield close to 6000 kg/ha whereas China's yield is 6709 k .. 

The inefficient use of water for agriculture is affecting the productivity. Although water is one of India's most scarce natural resources, India uses 2 to 4 times more water to produce a unit of major food crop than does China and Brazil. 

The world’s largest rice producers by far are China and India. The next largest rice producers are Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Thailand. These seven countries together account for more than 80% of world production.

The ‘Green Revolution’ is the name given to the dramatic increase in cereal crop yields through modern agricultural inputs – irrigation, fertilizers, improved seeds, and pesticides – in the 1960s. For rice, the revolution began with the release by IRRI of the high- yielding semidwarf variety IR8 in 1966. The world average rice yield in 1960, the product of thousands of years of experience, was about 2 tonnes/hectare (T/ha). Astonishingly, in only 40 more years, as the Green Revolution spread, it doubled, reaching 4 t/ha in 2000. The rice varieties and technologies developed during the Green Revolution have increased yields in some areas to 6–10 t/ha. 

Although the Green Revolution was mainly a technology revolution, it required strong public support and policies to develop the technologies, build the required infrastructure, ensure that markets, finance, and input systems worked and that farmers had enough knowledge and economic incentive to adopt the new practices. Public interventions were especially crucial in Asia for ensuring that small farmers were not left behind, and without which the Green Revolution would have been much less pro- poor. On average, Asian countries were spending 15.4% of their total government spending on agriculture by 1972 and they doubled the real value of their agricultural expenditure by 1985. 

Governments also shored up farm credit systems, subsidized key inputs – especially fertilizer, power, and water – and intervened in markets to ensure that farmers received adequate prices each year to make the technologies profitable. Many governments used their interventions to ensure that small farms did not get left behind. Substantial empirical evidence at the time showed that small farms were the more efficient producers in Asia and land reform and small farm development programs were implemented to create and support large numbers of small farms. Small farm–led agricultural growth proved to be not only more efficient but also more pro-poor, a win-win proposition for growth and poverty reduction.

Since the mid-1990s, population growth has exceeded rice yield growth and the gap has been growing steadily larger, creating a significant imbalance between supply and demand. This trend is evident for Asia as a whole, but also separately for East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. Stagnation in area harvested further contributed to the problem, and prices eventually began to rise. Indeed, world market rice prices rose steadily by a cumulative 67% between April 2001 and September 2007.

There are several possible reasons for the slowdown in rice yield growth and production: displacement of cereals on better lands by more profitable crops such as groundnuts, diminishing returns to modern varieties when irrigation and fertilizer use are already high, and the fact that cereal prices have fallen relative to input costs, making additional intensification less profitable. There is also concern that pest and disease resistance to modern pesticides now slows yield growth, and that breeders have largely exploited the yield potential of major Green Revolution crops. 

Environmental problems that have arisen in different areas include excessive and inappropriate use of fertilizers and pesticides that pollute waterways and kill beneficial insects and other wildlife, irrigation practices that lead to salt buildup and eventual abandonment of some of the best farming lands, increasing water scarcities in major river basins, and retreating groundwater levels in areas where more water is being pumped for irrigation than can be replenished. Some of these outcomes were inevitable as millions of largely illiterate farmers began to use modern inputs for the first time, but the problem was exacerbated by inadequate extension and training, an absence of effective regulation of water use and quality, and input pricing and subsidy policies that made modern inputs too cheap and encouraged their excessive use.

Globally, farmers need to produce at least 8–10 million tons more paddy rice each year—an annual increase of 1.2–1.5% over the coming decade, equivalent to an average yield increase of 0.6 t/ha during the next decade. Over the longer run, global rice consumption growth is expected to slow down but yields will have to continue to grow faster than at present because of pressure on rice lands in the developing world from urbanization, climate change, and competition from other, high-value agriculture. Rice yield growth of 1.0–1.2% annually beyond 2020 will be needed to feed the still-growing world and keep prices affordable.

Acknowledgement : This section sourced largely from this article. 

If we stop our emissions today, we won’t go back to the past

In 2017, there’s been a stunning decrease in Antarctic sea ice, reminiscent of the 2007 decrease in the Arctic.

What would happen to the climate if we were to stop emitting carbon dioxide today, right now? Would we return to the climate of our elders?

The simple answer is no. Once we release the carbon dioxide stored in the fossil fuels we burn, it accumulates in and moves among the atmosphere, the oceans, the land and the plants and animals of the biosphere. The released carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Only after many millennia will it return to rocks, for example, through the formation of calcium carbonate – limestone – as marine organisms’ shells settle to the bottom of the ocean. But on time spans relevant to humans, once released the carbon dioxide is in our environment essentially forever. It does not go away, unless we, ourselves, remove it.

In order to stop the accumulation of heat, we would have to eliminate not just carbon dioxide emissions, but all greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide. We’d also need to reverse deforestation and other land uses that affect the Earth’s energy balance (the difference between incoming energy from the sun and what’s returned to space). We would have to radically change our agriculture. If we did this, it would eliminate additional planetary warming, and limit the rise of air temperature.

A scientist writes : "As a professor of climate and space sciences, I teach my students they need to plan for a world 4℃ warmer. A 2011 report from the International Energy Agency states that if we don’t get off our current path, then we’re looking at an Earth 6℃ warmer. Even now after the Paris Agreement, the trajectory is essentially the same. It’s hard to say we’re on a new path until we see a peak and then a downturn in carbon emissions.

If we stop our emissions today, we won’t go back to the past. The Earth will warm. And since the response to warming is more warming through feedbacks associated with melting ice and increased atmospheric water vapor, our job becomes one of limiting the warming."

Acknowledgement : Sourced entirely from this link.