Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
There are positive aspects to tourism, however, which
should not be ignored. The income generated helps to
fund projects of sustainable tourism and research on
conservation, as well as supporting the social and cultural
development of aboriginal peoples. Ecotourism has the
potential to harm the physical environment, but its
impacts are less severe than mining and hydrocarbon
extraction. Ecotourists also play a useful role in promoting
conservation initiatives when they return to temperate
latitudes. Indeed, if planned sympathetically ecotourism
conserves the values which attracted the tourists in the
first place.
Tourism in mountains has a long history and attracts
more and more visitors each year. Impacts are usually
year-round, with both winter sports and summer activities
imposing pressures on fragile alpine ecosystems. There has
been considerable research on the pressures, impacts and
responses of mountain development in general, of which
tourism is just one component.
Figure 24.23
shows in
diagrammatic form the management options for reducing
impacts in mountain regions. Major studies of the past
impacts and future priorities in Earth's mountains have
been made by major international conservation organisa-
tions. Blueprints for sustainable futures have been mapped
out, but is there the will to make them succeed (Price
2007)?
CONCLUSION
Polar environments have become better understood since
the great strides in exploration and discovery of the final
years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the
twentieth. The Antarctic region is unique on Earth in
being the only entire ecosystem to be managed under the
Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine
Living Resources (CCAMLR), which came into effect in
1982 under the Antarctic Treaty System. The convention
confers a degree of protection unparalleled elsewhere. In
the Arctic the eight Arctic countries (Canada, Denmark,
Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United
States) have adopted the Arctic Environment Protection
Strategy (AEPS), which aims to protect the fragile polar
ecosystems. However, so far there is no unanimous view
on how the Arctic should be protected, as conservation is
defined as 'rational use'. There is little agreement on how
'rational use' should be interpreted; some countries define
it as 'no use', whilst others clearly intend to use the area
for non-renewable resources (metals and energy) and
even for the harvesting of marine renewable resources
(fish, seals, whales), The maintenance of healthy eco-
systems remains an important responsibility which will
not be easy to fulfil in the Arctic.
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Figure 24.23
Interactions in mountain
areas: pressures, impacts
and responses.
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