Turismo Parte Tres

Tourism in any location can have negative affects on the surrounding environment. These affects can be most noticed in areas that are not densely populated and are relatively untouched. Countries such as Costa Rica would qualify as a place that needs to pay attention to the damages great amounts of tourism can have on their environment. MeaningfulTravel outlines some of the impacts tourists can have on the places they visit.

Travel is the first big impact. Planes, trains, boats, and cars all require a lot of energy and produce a lot of polltion as well. Getting to your travel destination is a big deal but also just getting around while there can cause problems. Even if you choose to limit the use of gasoline using transportation, just walking around a fragile environment can be detrimental. In places like the rainforest one wrong step will kill bugs and animals and can harm plants. You can not go to such a dense natural area and not leave your footprints.

Many tourist activities in these regions can also harm the environment. For activities like zip linning, trees must be cleared in order to put the wires in place and make it safe for humans. Hotels and resorts also require large amounts of land to be built. People come to experience nature but parts of it have to be torn down just for that to be able to happen.

In areas of high tourism the natural resources can be of concern as well. If millions of people who expect luxury come into a small country, they can use just as much if not more of the areas natural resources during their short stays. Simple things like food and especially water can be strained.

Luckily for Costa Rica, the country is big on ecotourism which means that they are trying to perserve their environment while allowing tourists to enjoy the natural beauties. Costa Rica is working hard to protect all that nature has given them why also promoting tourist activities. Costa Rica also promotes recylcing, reusing, and other ways of being efficient in order to further protect the environment. They want to be a sustainable country without depleting their tourists population. Although in a few cases CR is trying to limit (not remove, just limit) the number of tourists in some places so that they do not further harm the land. When we traveled to Monteverde we saw some of the most trecherous roads in the country. We were told that the inhabitants of the region want the roads to be bad in order to somewhat deter too many tourists from traveling there. The roads are so awful and hard to drive on that many tourists may not want to take the risk and just decide to go else where. I can understand why the people may want to attract less tourists in a certain delicate area, but luckily there are plenty of other beautiful places for tourists to go.

I think Costa Rica is doing a great job of balancing tourism and environmental sustainability. As long as they continue the practies they are using and continue improving then they will be attracting visitors to a beautiful environment for years to come.