Impact of Tourism on Environment : Responding to Global Challenges

Tourism is one of the world's biggest and fastest growing industries. It constitutes the major source of income for many regions including those in emerging countries. The environmental and economic risks arising out of climate change have raised serious concern among nations across the globe. At the same time there exists a two fold relationship between tourism and climate change. Climate is the principal resource for tourism industry and more interestingly tourism itself accounts for many of these climatic and environmental issues. This sector is a non-negligible contributor to climate change especially through Green House Gas Emissions (GHG Emissions) and to the issues like depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution and also the physical impacts on nature like degradation of ecosystem. Tourism sector can play a significant role in addressing global environmental challenges, if the innovativeness and resources of this sector is fully mobilized and oriented towards this common goal. In this paper the author makes a serious effort to evaluate the challenges posed by tourism on environment. The study also looks in to the various mitigation measures that can be adopted by the tourism industries across the world to reduce GHG emissions as well as to reduce the negative impacts on environment. Strategies that can be taken by tourism industry for facing the challenges put forth by climate change are part of the study. The concept of “sustainable tourism” is the focus of this paper