| Montreal, 27/05/1999 – Given the pace and pressures of modern life, it's no
wonder more and more of us seek the tranquility and relaxation offered by a vacation,
immersed in bountiful natural environments or rich cultural traditions. But, when
multiplied by thousands upon thousands of tourists, that very act of experiencing our
natural and cultural heritage can damage or even destroy the beauty and charm we crave.
The critical question is whether the observer and the observed can co-exist.
This week, a workshop in the Cancún area of Mexico will attempt some answers. Entitled
‘A Dialogue on Sustainable Tourism in Natural Areas in North America', the
workshop is being convened by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), the
Montreal-based environmental organization that was set up in conjunction with the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among Canada, Mexico and the United States.
"As tourism becomes a more powerful engine of economic growth, it has the ability
to do a lot of damage or a lot of good," says Janine Ferretti, Interim Executive
Director of the CEC. "It can destroy the very things that draw tourists in the first
place. Or it can operate on a sustainable basis, preserving the health and integrity of
natural and cultural heritage indefinitely. In the context of a rapidly growing industry,
it is particularly crucial that we actively pursue the sustainable path." The CEC
came into being in 1994, created by the North American Agreement on Environmental
Cooperation (NAAEC), the environmental side accord to NAFTA. It is the CEC's mandate
to address environmental issues of regional concern and promote the effective enforcement
of environmental law in the context of trade liberalization in a cooperative manner.
Tourism is a critical economic sector of all three countries of North America. It is a
$1 trillion dollar-a-year industry, employing some 20 million people (1998). While tourism
has been growing at an annual rate of around four percent, nature travel has been
estimated to be increasing at an annual rate of between 10 and 30 percent. Responsible
development and proper management of sustainable tourism in natural areas would clearly
benefit the economies of all three nations, as well as provide important financial
resources for some of North America's poorest regions.
Canada, Mexico and the United States share many natural features, including the
ecosystems straddling their borders, geological formations such as the mountain chain
stretching from the Canadian Rockies to the Mexican Sierra Madre, and migratory animals
like whales, birds, and monarch butterflies. The nations also share such common challenges
as negative impacts on the most popular tourist destinations, and development in remote,
rural or aboriginal communities.
A recent report prepared by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified
four ways in which tourism can lead to environmental damage:
- changing or eliminating the natural environment and land and water resources by means
such as dredging and filling wetlands, particularly mangrove forests,
- generation of sewage and garbage, which can pollute surface and groundwater,
- damage to fragile ecosystems caused directly by tourist activity such as walking on
coral reefs and driving off-road vehicles in deserts, and
- seasonal increases in population density that intensify the problems above and increase
the burden on existing local infrastructure (such as water supply, food production and
cultural practices), to the point of causing them to fail or deliver reduced services,
threatening public and environmental health.
The report asserts that such environmental damage can be extremely serious because of
its impact on human health and the environment, as well as the eventual harm to the local
economy from the decrease in environment-dependent tourism as the environment is degraded.
At the same time, national and international environmental pressures are often more
harmful than either tourist activity or the local use of resources. The fact that the
causes of resource degradation often originate far from the site of the nature tour
highlights one of the benefits of North American trilateral cooperation for tourism
development, namely, the achievement of a degree of resource conservation that would
otherwise be unattainable by any single country.
Cooperation through the CEC will provide the opportunity for Canada, Mexico and the
United States to develop a common framework for nature-based tourism in North America.
Because it is a relatively new field, policies, operating principals and pilot projects to
promote sustainable tourism can be developed jointly in a cooperative fashion within the
region.
The goal of this week's workshop will be to provide input to the development of a
three-year program of work for the CEC in the field of sustainable tourism. Participants
will include tourism operators, nongovernmental organizations, academics and government
representatives from all three countries. A discussion paper prepared by the CEC for the
workshop will provide the participants with an initial assessment of relevant issues and
serve as a starting point for discussions of avenues for trilateral cooperative work in
this field of benefit to the North American environment. |
