tailieunhanh - Environmental Implications of the Tourism Industry

Northern China has long-standing water scarcity problems. In September 2008, after four-plus years of construction on a $2 billion 191-mile waterway, the city of Beijing began receiving water from the less populated southern regions of China. While the North-South pipeline will briefly ease the region’s water shortages, the Chinese government’s official news agency recently said the capital’s water supply could again reach a crisis point as early as 2010 due to population growth and rising domestic water consumption. Probe International, a Canadian environmental group, estimated that with Beijing’s water reservoirs down to one- tenth of their capacity, two-thirds of Beijing’s. | Environmental Implications of the Tourism Industry Terry Davies Sarah Cahill Discussion Paper 00-14 March 2000 Resources for the Future 1616 P Street NW Washington DC 20036 Telephone 202-328-5000 Fax 202-939-3460 Internet http 2000 Resources for the Future. All rights reserved. No portion of this paper may be reproduced without permission of the authors. Discussion papers are research materials circulated by their authors for purposes of information and discussion. They have not undergone formal peer review or the editorial treatment accorded RFF books and other publications. Terry Davies and Sarah Cahill Discussion Paper 00-14 Environmental Implications of the Tourism Industry Terry Davies and Sarah Cahill Abstract This report analyzes the environmental impacts of the tourism industry which is the third largest retail industry in the United States behind only automotive dealers and food stores. In 1998 travel and tourism contributed 91 billion to the . economy supporting million jobs directly and indirectly. While extensive research has documented the significant economic impact of such service industries as tourism little has been written about their effect on environmental quality. This study uses a framework developed from the industrial ecology literature to assess the impacts of the tourism industry on the environment. Three categories of impact are discussed direct impacts including impacts from the travel to a destination the tourist activities in and of themselves at that destination such as hiking or boating and from the creation operation and maintenance of facilities that cater to the tourist upstream impacts resulting from travel service providers ability to influence suppliers and downstream impacts where service providers can influence the behavior or consumption patterns of customers. We have identified impacts from tourist-related transportation including aircraft automobiles and recreational land and marine vehicles .