the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

attitudes towards environmental quality amongst both tourists and the communities
which host them (Hunter and Green, 1995).
Tourism's dependence on natural or environmental resources is not difficult to
appreciate. Increasingly, tourism has grown in areas able to offer distinct and
attractive environmental features. Romeril (1985), for example, states that natural
assets and attractions, such as 'sun, sea and sand', are generally the major reason
for a destination's popularity. Similarly, Morrison and Selman (1991) suggest that
tourism tends to develop in areas which are able to provide natural amenities,
coupled with human assets such as exotic cultures and historic sites. In fact, there is
no tourist activity which does not rely on natural or environmental resources in some
way (Pattullo, 1996). Natural environments not only provide features which directly
attract tourists, but also support tourism by fulfilling other requirements. For
example, natural resources are used to provide tourists with heat, power, food,
laundry facilities, sanitation facilities and drinking water. Similarly, the natural
environment is required to absorb the wastes generated by tourists, including refuse,
sewage and other effluents. Natural resources are not, however, either infinitely
renewable or endlessly resilient to the pressures placed upon them by tourism. In
other words, the pressures exerted on the environment by the increasing number of
tourism developments may be of such magnitude that the tourism activity becomes
unsustainable, and declines over the long term (Hunter and Green, 1995).
With the increasing awareness of environmental issues comes the possibility that
tourists will become more discerning in their choice of destination area, and that host
communities will become less amenable to the possibility of environmental
degradation, even if tourism provides substantial economic and social benefits. It
appears likely that there will be increasing pressure to find ways of integrating
tourism-related economic development with the sympathetic management and use
of natural or environmental resources. The need to give greater consideration to the
relationship between tourism development and environmental protection is
increasingly being recognised in the tourism literature (Hunter and Green, 1995).
Liu et al (1987), for example, studied the opinions of residents on the impacts of
tourism in Hawaii (a tourism-dominated island resort) and North Wales (a modest
tourism centre). The residents of both Hawaii and North Wales stated that the
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