The conflict between the environmental impact of tourism and its economic benefits has been a topic of debate in tourism studies.  Tourism has been seen as terribly harmful to the environments of countries that are popular for tourists and vacations, such as Australia.  The reason that these governments have not put a stop to tourism as a whole is because tourism has also proven to be a great contributor to the economies for these countries.  This debate needs an agreeable solution soon, because if not, the environments of these popular tourist destinations will be destroyed to the point that people will stop visiting and contributing to their economies.  Without a form of tourism, economies will lose a great chunk of their income, impacting their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment rates, and Gross Value Added (GVA).  Sustainable tourism is the best way to change tourism in a way that will continue to aid the economy, but also help protect the environment, so governments and people need to start promoting public transportation, recycling, and controlling the amount of physical impacts of tourism development.

The reason that tourism should not be taken away completely is that tourism is one of the largest contributors to the economies of countries that are popular destinations for visitors.  Tourism brings many outsiders to countries that have beautiful sight-seeing and adventures, which helps these countries’ GDPs, since they are receiving money from people that the country does not have to pay back through income.  Domestic purchases are good for the economy, but they are just recycled payments since one’s production is another person’s income.  This concept is the reason why receiving money from visitors, who are paid by other countries, is best for tourist destinations.  Tourism’s total addition to Australia’s GDP in the 2011 to 2012 year was $41 billion, and total tourism contribution ended up as $87.25 billion, 5.9% of Australia’s GDP (Dwyer).  In 2015, the GVA, gross value added, due to direct tourism in Australia added up to be $4.58 billion (Dwyer).  These numbers show that tourism is a large part of a country’s economy.  Tourists bring revenue by paying for hotels, meals, transportation, activities, and much more.  Once a hotel or restaurant surpasses their break-even point of what it cost to build their hotel or restaurant, the rest of the revenue is value added.  Therefore, bringing more tourists to their towns is important and healthy for the economy.  

Other examples that show that tourism is a beneficial concept are international visitor expenditures, and employment rate numbers.  In Australia, from 2011 to 2012, tourism directly employed 531,900 Australians through hotel employees, tour guides, and restaurant employees (Economic Contribution).  Without tourism, hotels, tour companies, and restaurants would not need as many employees, because there would not be as many people staying in hotels, going on tours, or eating in restaurants.  In 2015, employment in Australia increased to about 64,000 people directly employed due to tourism (Economic Contribution).  When counting Australians who were employed indirectly through tourism in 2015, this number jumps by 5 billion (Economic Tourism).  Indirect employment due to tourism are jobs that are generated through food production, agriculture, and retail industries.  Just like employment rates, international visitor expenditures also bring in a lot of revenue to countries.  Throughout the 2011-2012 economic year, 5.9 million international visitors entered Australia and contributed $25,547 millions of tourism exports (Dwyer).  A recent economic report from December 2016 shows that international visitors to Australia have grown by 5.8% and international visitor expenditure has risen by 8.2%, making 2016 a record year of $971million in expenditures (Economic Tourism). 

Although tourism does help the economy, it is not completely positive.  It actually does have a major downfall, which is the harm it brings to the environment.  Tourism brings many people to countries, and these visitors’ transportation fuels, their waste, and their use of natural resources all hurt these welcoming environments.  Tourism is often talked about for being a large contributor of carbon emissions throughout the world (Multidisciplinary Academic Conference). 

The article relays how the intensive use of energy that is needed to produce tourism activities leads to the discharge of greenhouse gases.  It used the information from UNWTO 2008, that estimations show that discharges due to tourism are about 5% across the whole world (Multidisciplinary Academic Conference).  Other issues that tourists bring are the depletion of natural resources, such as water resources, pollution, and physical impacts.  Fresh water is a critical natural resource, and the tourism industry generally overuses water through hotels, swimming pools, and tourist’s personal use (UNEP).  Tourism can also be blamed for being a contributor to pollution such as air pollution, solid waste and littering, sewage, and aesthetic pollution (UNEP).  Air pollution is caused by the excess transportation of tourists, solid waste can be seen through trash in rivers and on hiking trails, sewage pollution is caused by the construction of hotels that pollute seas and lakes, and aesthetic pollution is due to developing roads and buildings along coastlines and scenic routes (UNEP).  

Since both sides of this topic have a well-proven point, the best solution is to find a happy medium that will help in a way that does not get rid of tourism’s benefits, but that lessens the harms it brings to the environment: sustainable tourism.  Sustainable tourism is the best option in this case scenario because it is the only way to make both sides of the argument be heard equally.  Without sustainability in mind, there is no way that any development will benefit all stakeholders involved in the development.  The sustainable tourism article in UNEP’s website is the first time UNEP and WTO combined their own ideas in a joint effort to infuse tourism with sustainability in a single publication (UNEP).  Sustainability is the acknowledgement of the responsibility that everyone involved in tourism holds.  Although most of the negative impacts that tourism causes are due to private sector enterprises and tourists themselves, there is a clear need for governments to take charge (UNEP).  For real progress to be made, governments need to be the starting push by placing and enforcing policies and action programs.  This needs to happen soon, because the Carbon Dioxide that is coming from burning fossil fuels and that are ruining the environments that tourists are attracted to right now may lead to the decline of people that will want to visit in the future(Tugcu, Topcu).   Although the government is important in sustainable tourism, so are tourists.  Everyone is accountable for their actions, and everyone has the power to help the environment.  Marketers can promote public transportation, governments can begin to provide more public transportation options, people can learn more about recycling, and anyone can help plant trees to provide oxygen and beauty.  

Public transportation and carpooling are crucial solutions to make tourism more sustainable because they reduce the amount of gas pollution.  A few ways examples of this in action are electric cars, such as Priuses, and Uber’s new edition of Uber-pools.  Uber-pool allows riders that are going to the same destination or in the same general direction to share a ride together.  This is helpful because instead of strangers taking two or three cars, they can take only one, using less gas, and letting out less fuels into the environment.  These are just baby steps, which is why tourism planners and businesses should work together to promote a shift in to the use of more environmental safe forms of transportation.  Some options that Australia is trying to promote are the use of trains, busses, bicycles, and walking on foot to and within tourist destinations (Environmentally Sustainable Tourism Strategic Plan).  Lowering the amount of ground transportation is an important step, but Tourism Australia aims for something even more impactful.  They will soon work with the aviation industry to get them to hopefully inform consumers about their impacts as tourists, so that they will be conscious of their actions when they reach their destinations.  They are also encouraging airlines to improve their fuel efficiency (Environmentally Sustainable Tourism Strategic Plan).  This is an important issue to get hold of because in the European Union, the let out of greenhouse gas due to airplanes has increased by 87% between 1990 and 2006 (Clark).  This may be the biggest issue in the transportation category, because one flight is about the same amount of carbon output as a typical person’s amount of carbon output from driving a car (Clark).  A huge goal for sustainable tourism is the issue of transportation and the terrible effects it has on the environment.  To cut the amount of Carbon Dioxide that is let out into the world because of cars and planes in half would be a great change and accomplishment for sustainable tourism.  To do this, educating the public on the consequences, and educating them on how to help is essential, which is why Tourism Australia’s deal with airlines to promote this to their passengers is important. 

Along with educating tourists about their transportation options, it is important to educate them on recycling and taking care of their waste.  Another issue that tourism brings to the environment is tourist’s waste, which can be prevented, or lessened with the use of recycling.  Waste is a huge issue, because it pollutes waters such as lakes, rivers, and oceans.  It also makes high populated tourist attractions less attractive and pretty, because waste makes these places dirtier and less presentable.  With more tourists, there are more people going on hikes, boats, and walks in these environments, creating more waste that ends up on the ground and in the beautiful water.  With all the technological advances in the world, people are breezing through technological products, and it is important that they recycle their old phones, laptops, iPads, televisions, and other technological pieces from the past.  In Australia, the annual production of plastics has risen from 1.5 million tonnes in 1950 to 300 million tonnes in 2013 (Australian Government).  Popular types of plastics products are packaging products, cosmetics, hygiene products, and plastic bags.  Fifty percent of plastics are disposed after one use, instead of being used multiple times, making it a huge waste that needs to be fixed (Australian Government).  Right now, there is only one group of plastics, thermos-softening plastics, that can be recycled and made into different shapes, which is ideal for recycling (Australian Government).  Increasing education on recycling to everyone in school, and reminders made from airlines would be ideal for sustainable tourism, because if more people are aware of the damages caused by not recycling, they will be more inclined to help.  Also, the more people know, the better chance that people will try to use products that are made with thermos-softening plastics, which will help decrease the amount of waste caused by plastics all over the world.  A hotel in Costa Rica, Finca Rosa Blanca, has sustainability in mind.  For example, it shows through their goals: “to leave the minimum possible trace of our existence and to be as eco friendly and sustainable as a small eco hotel could” (Finca Rosa Blanca).  This hotel has become the highest ranked hotel of the Sustainable Tourism Certification program, being the only hotel to receive a perfect score.  A few of their amenities that have earned them their 100% score are solar panels to heat hot water, organic shade grown coffee, recycling the coffee as fertilizer, and a greenhouse (Finca Rosa Blanca).  A few more are an underground electrical system that does not get in the way of wildlife, 1 gallon flush toilets, and recycled materials such as roof tiles and waste receptacles (Finca Rosa Blanca).  Since hotels are necessities in high tourist destinations, it is important that all hotels learn from, and strive to be like Finca Rosa Blanca.  If all hotels were as dedicated to helping the environment as this hotel, the environment would be so much healthier.  By recycling materials, the hotel is saving money on resources, and planting a garden will give the hotel fresh fruits and vegetable for free.  An influential government policy would be an environmental quota that would require hotels to be inspected, and have an environmental friendly percentage that they all must reach.  Along with recycling, another way that people can be conscious of their actions and take charge in helping our earth is by easily planting trees and being stingy on water waste.

Tourism also brings physical impacts to the environment due to the developments and demands that tourism requires.   Tourism calls for more roads and airports, which leads to land degradation and the loss of wildlife and scenery.  For example, the number of roads and facilities in Yosemite National Park have increased as the growing number of visitors has also increased (UNEP).  Countries that are having more and more tourists find themselves in a cycle of creating more parking lots, public bathrooms, roads, and other amenities more frequently in order to provide for and be able to control hosting more visitors. In Yosemite, these actions have resulted in the loss of habitats throughout the park and also pollution from forms of transportation emissions.  These faults have become so bad that the Sierra Club reported that “Smog so thick that Yosemite Valley could not be seen from airplanes” (UNEP).  Along the same lines of Yosemite, construction of ski resorts and other tourism facilities also increase deforestation and construction in natural places.  The amount of tourism that is not sustainable causes so much harm that is unrecognizable to tourists and other people.  It is important that people recognize these issues so that they can decide to help and look after our planet.  Hiking, a common tourist activity in which visitors can explore the nature of the place they are visiting, also causes trampling by tourists using the same trail over and over again, hurting the vegetation and soil which causes severe damage (UNEP).  Many arguments about the negative side of tourism are that it causes pollution, global warming, and other dangers that can be helped by promoting public transportation and recycling, but the issues that it causes to the land itself are much harder to fix.  The harm tourists cause to the land simply by walking and by needing roads and building is a part of tourism that is harder to fix.  Trampling is something that can only be prevented by ending and banning tourism all together. That is not what sustainable tourism wants, but hopefully something sustainable tourism activists can work to improve.  If not banning, maybe lessening the number of tourists or creating less roads and buildings and making tourists deal with less amenities will be helpful.   This issue of tourism is important, but also more difficult to pinpoint than the other downfalls.  This is a reachable goal, but it is also a goal that will need hard work and dedication to our environment to solve.  

Positive and negative impacts of tourism is a difficult topic to pick a side on because both sides are presented well and one cannot be proven more important than the other.  Because of this, the best way to approach it is by pleasing both sides.  This is what sustainable tourism aims to accomplish.  Since tourism is so great for the economy, tourism should not be banned by any country.  On the other hand, since tourism has been so harmful to the environment, it cannot be increasing like it has been if it is not changed and dealt with in a more conscious way.  If it continues to be harmful, tourist destinations will become less scenic and less people will want to visit, causing the economies to stop receiving money from tourism.  Since these two go hand in hand, something needs to be done.  A few, of many, parts of sustainable tourism that should be recognized and promoted are public transportation and recycling.  These two acts will help the environment by letting out less gases and pollution from automobiles and they will also prevent less waste.  This will improve air quality and also water quality.  Something that sustainable tourism should work to improve is the physical impacts of tourism development.  With this under control, tourism should be able to improve economies while also not destroying the environment.  
