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| Tourism |
Please note: Due to staff changes WWF-UK is not currently working on tourism issues. However, this site contains a comprehensive overview of our work to date. Our useful sites page contains links to organisations who are currently working on tourism issues. (See menu on left)
Why tourism? | WWF-UK | WWF network
Why tourism?
Tourism is the largest and fastest growing industry in the world. It has significant environmental, cultural, social, and economic impacts, both positive and negative. If undertaken responsibly, tourism can be a positive force for sustainable development, conservation and environmental protection. If unplanned, tourism can be socially, culturally and economically disruptive, and have a devastating effect on fragile environments.
Popular and marketable holidays rely, to a large extent, on the existence of attractive and clean destinations. These often occur in environmentally fragile areas that are biologically significant and rich in wildlife. WWF and the tourism sector therefore need to share a common goal: the long-term preservation of the natural environment.
WWF believes that 'sustainable tourism' is currently an unachievable ideal, not least because of the significant contribution that air travel makes to climate change. It is therefore more useful to think about 'responsible tourism' within the context of a wider sustainable development strategy.
WWF-UK
At WWF-UK, our tourism programme focused on the following areas:
- corporate social responsibility in the tourism sector - working with big tour operators to advance their thinking on sustainability;
- developing practical tools for responsible tourism, including:
- ecological footprinting (to estimate the environmental impact of individual holiday products);
- hotel benchmarking (to measure and improve the efficiency of hotels by reducing excessive resource use); and
- annual sustainability reporting;
- participation, advisory and advocacy work in:
- international and national policy fora (eg the Convention on Biological Diversity);
- responsible tourism initiatives (eg the Tour Operators' Initiative);
- tourism certification (eg, the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council process);
- best practice ecotourism; and
- consumer awareness.
WWF network
Internationally, tourism is an important cross-cutting activity for WWF, since it impacts on our other programmes - such as climate change, through air travel; and freshwater, through water usage in hotels and golf courses. In addition, large-scale mass tourism development can pose threats to fragile ecosystems in key ecoregions such as the Mediterranean and the meso-American reef. On a smaller scale, ecotourism or community-based tourism is often proposed in field projects as an alternative sustainable livelihood for local communities. In Namibia, for example, tourism plays a key role in supporting conservancies.
Several offices in the WWF network have tourism programmes. The WWF Arctic Programme, WWF-Brazil and WWF-Malaysia have all been instrumental in defining responsible tourism in their regions, and are all working with the tourism industry to develop good practice and tourism certification schemes. The WWF Mediterranean Programme is also collaborating with the tourism industry to improve the communication of conservation issues to holidaymakers, as well as seeking its commitment to the protection of key coastal areas important to biodiversity. |
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WWF-UK > Research > Issues > Tourism
