"Becoming" toxic? It's been toxic. Tourism has had a huge negative effect on many places.
On the flip side, tourism has the capacity to help support communities, bring awareness to critical issues, and instigate positive environmental change when done right.
Unfortunately, the way many people travel - the way that is cheapest, easiest, most convenient - is terrible for the environment.
'When done right' is always such an important factor when discussing whether human behaviour is good, bad or neutral for the climate.
We could be doing everything right, theoretically, but we're just not.
Tourism helps people, but that's not why John Smith flies to the Caribbean. It's just the only justification available to him, when he's called out on it.
I guess? I don’t know. Hiking and backpacking can be extremely gatekeepy. It’s gross. We set aside those places specifically for people to enjoy nature. Sure it’s a bummer sometimes, but I can’t be mad at more people enjoying nature. Shit maybe they’ll want to preserve it like I do and get involved.
It's less gatekeepering hiking/backpacking and more being critical of people being disrespectful to their fellow hikers and nature. The number of people trampling all over seeking that perfect social media selfie and loud drunks who insist on smoking foul concoctions and leaving their trash lying around for the park rangers to have to clean up has led to a number of trails local to me to be closed down permanently.
First, don't be surprised that people who go hiking and camping to get away from noise and people are annoyed when those areas are now getting noisy and overrun with people.
Second, more people means there will be more bad people. More bad people makes the places worse for everyone. It also encourages other people to act the same as "other people are doing it, so it's fine", making it even worse, e.g. litter, campfires in banned areas.
Communities can be supported in other ways. Tourism is pushed and pushed and the propaganda is that we need to endlessly increase tourism or the economy collapses. Everything is about growth because it’s more profitable for the rich. Even when the cities or towns can’t support it.
Tourists also use water and roads and sewage systems and garbage disposal. All these services locals pay taxes for.
Airbnbs displacing locals.
Tourism worsens housing crises.
Animals thrived in 2020 where i live because tourism was almost 0. Traffic improved and people were less angry and aggressive. Because we were overcrowded.
We weren’t filling every bit of space with people.
Locals still went to parks but it was nothing compared to how invasive tourism is.
People act like humans and profits matter more than anything.
would you prefer Hawaii become like the Solomon Islands
In Oceania the choices are tourism or barely existing at subsistence level. With Hawaii's population density your likely looking at below subsistence level
I don’t really travel but I hear the best thing you can do when you go on trips like a cruise is to go outside of the cruise port areas that you get dropped off at. I hear that money goes back to the cruise ship and not the local people. You want to get outside of that area to really put your money where it will help the locals. So I try to tell people this. Not just for cruises. For actual resort trips too and in general.
I hope I’m making sense
Edit: thank you for who commented the word I was looking for. I edited my sentence.
More efficient then what exactly? There aren't many alternatives to it.
But the problem with cruise ships is that they burn bunk fuel, don't polluted water into oceans and so on. Many ships (including cruise ships) are registered in countries with lax rules on pollution and only stick to regulations when they are within national water but pollute in international waters.
My dad took me all over the world when I was younger.
Most places we traveled people assumed we were Canadian or French. We have heavy Californian accents... but it's because we actually behaved ourselves, respected the land and locals, and listened to what we were told. We were invited so many places we wouldn't have been able to go otherwise.
I saw so many tourists who were.... not like that.
You are absolutely right and your last paragraph is very important, and given how little awareness there is (from everything I've seen, especially in the US) I think it's important to be explicit about what you mean - flying is the most polluting thing an individual can do (though cruises are close). As a culture we need to move away from frequent flying, especially for recreation.
As someone who is interested in doing good for the environment, do you happen to know methods of tourism that “instigate positive environmental change” that average laypeople are capable of doing?
I would love to do stuff but I can’t immediately think of things off the top of my head. Most I can think of is something like bikepacking and picking up garbage from scenery sites along the way.
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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '24
"Becoming" toxic? It's been toxic. Tourism has had a huge negative effect on many places.
On the flip side, tourism has the capacity to help support communities, bring awareness to critical issues, and instigate positive environmental change when done right.
Unfortunately, the way many people travel - the way that is cheapest, easiest, most convenient - is terrible for the environment.