THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF ECO-TOURISM

Decision-makers and social scientists now become conscious that eco-tourism will also engender severe undesirable environmental impacts by introducing “new modified package known as “alternative tourism”, “green tourism”, “nature tourism”, “simple tourism”, “low-impact tourism”, “low density tourism”, “small scale tourism”, “environmental-sound tourism”, “nature-based tourism”, sustainable tourism”, “wilderness tourism, and many more (z.Mieczkowski, 1995).  These terms or the other side of the story, reveal their worry on the negative effect of ecotourism and eco-tourists activities.

Scholars have illustrated that eco-tourism activities create its share of environmental problems or negative impacts.  For example, influx of tourists to a tourist destination results the tourist destination suffers from overcrowding, which often results in litter, noise and air pollution, in addition to other environmental problems (Lewis, 1998).  Sometimes it is probably true to assert that, “tourism kills tourism”. 

Some researchers proved that recreational activities have significant relationships with the integrity of water quality – degraded water quality may be attributed to tourist boating activity (Adams, 1993), oil spills (Warner, 1991).         

Besides that, vegetation (flora) is one of the major attractions to many tourists, which some of these species are so alluring to tourists.  It may result illegal collection of plants by tourists. In  one incident, as an example, three Japanese tourists were fined RM1500 each (in default of 3 months jail) for attempting to smuggle rare wild orchids out of the Mulu National Park (an offence under Sarawak Wildlife Ordinance 1998) (although their plea was : “It was a sincere mistake, and we didn’t know it is an offence”) (The Star 18.4.2002). 

It was said (Wang & Miko, 1997) that for centuries, traveling to destination to see wildlife (fauna) has been one of the major travel motivations for many tourists.  Photographing by tourists will give negative impacts on wildlife (Bodger, 1992).  And these to include close shadowing or chasing of animals by tourists (Myers, 1975) and littering of habitats (Rensberger, 1977). 

Tourists also cause degradation of shorelines and river banks – removing shells or life forms or attractive stones from the water (Bachmann, 1984) or river bank, or interfering with the breeding habits of wildlife (Jacobson & Lopes, 1994; Renton, 1989). Tourism sometimes associates with vandalisms. Vehicles being driven off designated roads by tourists are another example of tourist’s activities that has undesirable results.  Some other illustrations are: Tourists’ chopping trees for firewood (Boo, 1990; Mathieson & Wall, 1982; Warner, 1991), dumping of garbage (Socher, 1976), tourists’ careless use of fire (Boo, 1990; Mathieson & Wall, 1982) and careless mooring of boats (Hierta, 1994; Norris, 1994).  For our intent and purposes, pictures below are self-explanatory: 

Some vandalism acts are so severe, and, as stated by Ryan (1991), “is vandalism beyond belief”.

Eco-tourist may also go beyond the allowable boundary of acceptable social-environmental life.  For example, according to Britton (1978) tourists who engage in nude and topless bathing are highly offensive to the majority of the locals.  A few authors describe tourism as “whorism” (loannides, 1995), the sector that promotes undesirable lifestyles like prostitution, drug addiction and crime.

But, the question is: how? – We do need all of these people?  They are tourists, some eco-tourists, actually!

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The above is extract of a paper, Badaruddin Mohamed, Abdul Aziz Hussin, Ahmad Puad Mat Som and Azizi Bahauddin (2007) Managing Ecotourism in Wetland Areas: Conflicting authority and interests ISWS2006 – International Seminar on Wetland and Sustainability, Puteri Pan Pacific, Johor Bharu, 4-6 September 2007