Global Change and Mountains: Consequences, Responses and Opportunities - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 115

natural ecosystem, economy, society, culture, perception and attitude of
people. During the recent years, mountains have emerged as the second
most popular tourist destinations after coastal regions in the world, and
they share as much as 15-20% of the global tourism market (FAO 2005).
One the one hand, the rapidly growing tourism industry has contributed
signifi cantly to world economy and played an important role in alleviating
poverty through providing economic opportunities for local people in both
developed and developing regions of the world, while on the other hand
increasing tourism has created a series of environmental problems ranging
from land-use changes, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, destruction of
natural habitats, pollution, etc., and resource-use confl icts among different
stakeholders. These changes have threatened the very basis of tourism in
many mountain areas, particularly in developing countries where tourism
is still mostly unplanned and unregulated. Further, it is expected that the
growth of tourism would increase the demand of water and energy besides
creating resource-use confl icts with other sectors of economy, and it may
also create confl icts among various competitive resource users and with
conservation practices in all mountain regions of the world.
The mountain tourism is highly diverse, involving a variety of seasonal
activities, and at the same time it has become highly competitive and
sensitive to political and economic changes. Hence, the benefi ts of increasing
tourism are very unevenly distributed and unpredictable over the mountains
regions across the world, for instance, in the Alps 40% of communities have
no tourism and only 10% have major tourist infrastructure. The changing
climatic conditions have severely threatened winter tourism in all tourist
destinations in the Alps, a rise of 4°C temperature is expected to reduce the
availability winter sport sites to 30% (Abegg et al. 2007).
One the one hand, the rapidly growing tourism industry has contributed
signifi cantly to world economy and played important role in alleviating
poverty through providing economic opportunities for local people in both
developed and developing regions of the world (Kruk et al. 2007), while
on the other hand increasing tourism has created a series of environmental
problems ranging from land-use changes, deforestation, loss of biodiversity,
destruction of natural habitats, pollution, etc., and resource-use confl icts
among different stakeholders. These changes have threatened the very basis
of tourism in many parts of the planet, particularly in developing countries
where tourism is still mostly unplanned and unregulated. Moreover, it is
expected that the growth of tourism would increase the demand of water and
energy besides creating resource-use confl icts with other sectors of economy,
and it may also create confl icts among various competitive resource users
and with conservation practices in sensitive mountain ecosystems which
are already under stress of various other drivers of change.