Tourism and the Environmental Components Coexisting in the Himalayas: A Trade-Off Between the Two

ABSTRACT

Resource intensiveness diminishes ecological services and future eco-benefits, increasing poverty and inequality. The pursuit threshold is planning and managing resources, which can jeopardize or help fragile locations, depending on the management strategy. This study attempted to evaluate the trade-off between tourism and the environment using a conceptual modeling approach involving stakeholders. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), a technique with the Leopold Matrix, was used for evaluating the magnitude and importance between tourism activities and environmental components. We identified 14 major tourist activities that can affect six different environmental components with other potential consequences and how the environmental components are important to tourism activities. In consultation with the stakeholders, the Delphi Survey with Content Validation Ratio (CVR) was used to determine the list of tourism activities, environmental factors, and potential consequences. The severity, magnitude, and importance were estimated based on the perceived information from experts. In conclusion, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an invaluable tool for evaluating, monitoring and mitigating the adverse effects of tourism. Its use holds significant potential in the pursuit of sustainable tourism management.

KEYWORDS:

• Resource intensiveness
• resource management
• EIA, Leopold Matrix
• sustainable tourism

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the stakeholders for their sincere responses on which the study is entirely based.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data will be made available on reasonable request.

Ethical conduct

This manuscript is the authors own original work, which has not been previously published elsewhere. This paper is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.