Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Plate 8.4: Victoria Harbour, British
Columbia, Canada, serves as a base for
marine tourism operations as well as
private vessels, ferries, cruise ships
and float planes.
CONCLUSION
The coastal environment has been neglected in one sense by the geographer, where
recreational and tourism activity have not been understood in the wide context of the
resource, its use, impacts and planning needs. The development of studies such as
Tunstall and Penning-Rowsell (1998), has re-established geographers' major
contributions to the analysis of coastal recreation and tourism, building on seminal
studies by Fabbri (1990) and P.P.Wong (1993b). Yet even these are not cited as
mainstream studies or recognised for their synthesising role in bringing together different
disciplines to disseminate a diverse and rich range of experience and knowledge of
coastal processes, impacts, applied research and concerns about the leisure use of fragile
coastal environments. The coastline needs to be moved higher up the geographer's
research agenda in tourism and recreation, reiterating Patmore's (1983) criticism of the
comparative neglect of this issue. Given the value and significance attached to the beach
and coast observed by Tunstall and Penning-Rowsell (1998), it is evident that the coast is
a major recreational environment. The association with resorts and the geographer's
preoccupation with resort models and development should arguably be directed to a fuller
understanding of the impact of human beings on the coastal environment, particularly the
interference with coastal processes and the resulting measures needed to redress the
consequences for the coastal environment.
There is no doubt that the coastal environment is facing a wide range of environmental
pressures not least of which is the intensity of use. This, combined with environmental
impacts from human activity, poses many severe planning problems for one simple
reason: the scale and rate of change associated with coastal processes (e.g. erosion) are
rapid, as the examples provided by R.Carter (1990) and Kelletat (1993) have shown. This
requires costly remedial action, particularly in the case of beach nourishment and in
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