PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2005, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (1): 127-136.doi: 10.11820/dlkxjz.2005.01.014

• Original Articles • Previous Articles    

Review of Oversea Studies on Tourism Impact of Water Environment

WANG Qun1, ZHANG Jinhe1,2, DING Zurong3, YANG Xingzhu1   

  1. 1. College of Territorial Resources and Tourism, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China;
    2. Department of Urban and Resources, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China;
    3. Department of Science and Technology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China
  • Received:2004-06-01 Revised:2004-10-01 Online:2005-01-25 Published:2005-01-25

Abstract:

Since the appeal “the water will cause serious social crisis” in the first human environment meeting of the United Nations in 1972, international society has paid attention to water environment. The surface and underground water has broadly been used in tourism industry. With the development of tourism, it is obvious that tourism has serious impact on water environment. Water environment includes water pollution and water supply scarcity, which has become one of the main obstacles to sustainable tourism development. The authors provided a review of oversea studies of tourism impact on water environment. Four important aspects of oversea papers have been described in the following. Section one expounds the main study methods and regions. Problems of water environment are very serious in these regions. The mutual impact between water pollution and tourism has been summarized in section two. We find that tourism development produces many problems of water pollution, and polluted water damages tourism, which results in vicious cycle. The aim of the third section is to analyze the main impacts on equilibrium between water supply and tourism demand. The conclusion is that water demand is not the same in different tourism facilities and regions. The last section offers some measures about policy, technology, economy and education. Then implement results on water environment management are explained. The driving forces for implementing water environment management are extra control, economic factor and ethic factor. Water environment management is most effectively implemented where all three driving forces play an important part. Economic factor is the direct means and ethic is the long-term measure. In China, water management has been placed on the agenda. Tourism water environment will become one of the main domains in sustainable tourism development in the future. So, the authors hope that the review contributes to water environment study and protection for scholars, governments and industrialists at home.

Key words: overseas, tourism, water environment