If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
_Lonely Planet_ Threat to Environment
"Tourism a Huge Threat to Global Environment
Fri Sep 12, 4:48 PM ET By Ed Stoddard DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) - A boom in world tourism is posing a huge threat to some of the planet's most sensitive ecosystems, according to a study released on Friday. The study, by Conservation International (CI) and the United Nations (news - web sites) Environment Program (UNEP), said tourism rose by more than 100 percent between 1990 and 2000 in the world's "biodiversity hotspots," which include the tropical Andes and the Guinean forests of West Africa. CI has identified 25 such areas, which contain 44 percent of all identified endemic plant species and 35 percent of all known endemic species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. The hotspots cover only 1.4 percent of the planet's land area and all been significantly altered by human activities. "In some places the growth (in tourism) has been staggering," CI and UNEP said in a statement released at the fifth World Parks Congress in the South African port city of Durban. "Over the past decade, tourism has increased by more than 200 percent in both Laos and Cambodia, nearly 500 percent in South Africa, (and) over 300 percent in the countries of Brazil, Nicaragua and El Salvador (news - web sites)," it said. " http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030912/sc_nm/environment_parks_tourism_dc_2 |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Topographic maps
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|