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

2.11.1.4 Natural Resources
In constructing and maintaining tourism developments, the natural resources
(biological and physical, renewable and non-renewable) of a destination area will
become altered and depleted. Indeed, the use of resources may not necessarily be
restricted to the immediate vicinity and may involve the importation of construction
materials, for example, from another region or country, extending the potential
environmental sphere of influence of a particular development. As with air pollution,
the use of natural resources by the tourism industry can have global environmental
implications, for example, the use of tropical hardwood tree species in
building/decorating work, or the use of f1uorocarbons (CFCs). The majority of studies
in the tourism literature, however, tend to concentrate on the use of natural
resources within, or very close to, the destination area (Hunter and Green, 1995).
One resource which has caused much conflict between locals and those involved in
tourism, is fresh-water. Tourists are generally attracted to warm, relatively dry
climates where precipitation and fresh-water supplies are scarce. In the
Mediterranean, for example, hotels can easily consume 400 litres of water per guest
per day for washing, showering, swimming pools, watering lawns, etc., while locals
may require a maximum of 70 litres per person per day (Hamele, 1988). Evidence
from the Caribbean suggests that tourist water consumption can be over three times
higher than local resident use (Pattullo, 1996). Furthermore, so called
'environmentally friendly' or 'green' forms of tourist recreation, such as golfing, often
require large quantities of fresh-water for watering purposes, exerting an
unsustainable drain on renewable supplies. Tananone (1991), referring to the boom
in golf courses for tourists in Thailand, states that each golf course requires an
average of 3000 cubic meters of water per day.
In Goa and other southern India beach resorts, tourism has also led to the exclusion
of local communities from valuable water supplies (Chopra, 1991). Similarly,
Briguglio et al (1996) report of an increasing lack of adequate supplies of high
quality drinking water for both tourists and residents in some Caribbean resorts.
Milne (1990) highlights an interesting sequence of environmental impacts which
occurred in some off-shore island resorts in the Pacific. As these islands have a very
limited supply of fresh-water, salt water was used in septic tanks. The salt in the
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