PHILOSOPHY/GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
By their nature, park and tourism developments depend on close and intimate
associations with the ecosystems around them. Instead of viewing from
the outside, as in a museum, park visitors and ecotourists seek to participate,
to join in, to experience, and to gain a better awareness, appreciation,
and understanding of the ecological system. Because ecosystems have the
innate, though not easily quantifiable, capacity to provide energy, space,
and waste disposal to their components, joining in inevitably causes costs
to and changes in the system. Sustainable use, planning, design, and development
attempt to minimize these costs so that the system will continue to function
indefinitely within an acceptable limit of change.
A basic premise of sustainable park and tourism development is that facilities must, to the fullest extent possible, function within the ecosystem and its processes rather than separately. Although it is not always readily apparent, ecosystems provide direct services to the human developments within them. Obvious ecological services are those such as vegetative screening, water/wastewater purification, self-maintenance, and continual recovery of the resource around a development (e.g., beaches, forests, reefs, and wildlife). If the ecosystem becomes overloaded or severely stressed, these services are jeopardized.
The following are essential considerations for the integration of park and ecotourism development with natural resources.
- Natural Behavior Within an Ecosystem
- A basic understanding of the natural behavior of an ecosystem is required
before designing facilities to function sustainably within it. It is
crucial to identify key resources on which ecotourism will be focused
and to understand how these resources are linked. Geographic information
system inventories of soils, hydrology, and plant and animal communities
can aid in this understanding.
- Links Between Ecosystems - There
are links between ecosystems that may be geographically separate, e.g.,
between mountain forests and coastal mangroves, between mangroves and
coral reefs. Changes in one ecosystem may have consequences in another;
long-term resource protection involves planning and government controls
on a wide geographical basis.
- Fragmentation of Habitats - Whether
due to a specific facility or throughout an ecosystem, habitat fragmentation
causes loss of biological diversity and must be minimized.
- Energy Subsidies for Ecosystems -
Of all the varied ecosystems in which humans live, few still function
totally without imported energy - food, fuel, even water - to sustain
human needs. It is therefore unrealistic to expect park and tourism
developments to function completely without imported energy. However,
sustainable planning and design can keep that energy subsidy to a minimum
by taking advantage of renewable energy resources within the local ecosystem.
Questioning how the development can function (and even if it should)
if the energy subsidy were unavailable will keep development more in
harmony with existing resources and minimize the environmental impact
of exporting energy from a distant ecosystem.
- Human Demands on Ecosystems - The
demands of human use on an ecosystem are cumulative. New proposals must
account for the previous use of resources so that effects of the activity,
the proposed development, and increased use do not exceed the ecosystem's
capability. The scale and type of any potential development should be
determined by the capability and resiliency of the ecosystem rather
than by the physical capacity of the site.
- Acceptable Limits of Change -
Change
in the system is inevitable,
but limits of acceptable environmental change should be established
before development begins. Acceptable change should not approach the
upper limit of capacity. Unpredictable events such as droughts and hurricanes,
which could cause the whole system to collapse, should be considered.
All parties should recognize and respect these limits and not attempt
to extend them by simply importing more and more energy or creating
other artificial support.
- Ecosystem Monitoring - The effects on surrounding resources of developing and operating facilities should be routinely monitored and evaluated, and actions should be taken immediately to correct problems. This will ensure that the limits of acceptable change are not exceeded and will provide information about the behavior of the system. This information can be used for improved designs. Indicator species provide useful and efficient monitoring tools.
IMPACTS OF DEVELOPMENT
ON NATURAL RESOURCES 
As a practical means of anticipating and minimizing possible negative
impacts of park or tourism development on the environment, a matrix is
provided (see table 2). Users of Guiding Principles of Sustainable Design
should review the matrix before committing themselves to a particular
approach. Once a potential development approach is identified from the
matrix, it is possible to reference other sections of the guidebook or
other sources where the approach may be examined in greater detail.
If
a particular or development approach or activity in the body of the matrix
is selected, it may lead to certain negative impacts on the environment.
The potential impacts are arranged into three categories - pollution,
physical processes, and biological systems. Under these categories are
the resultant impacts of an approach or activity - e.g., noise increased,
erosion increased, vegetation altered. A solid black dot indicates a negative
impact.
Identifying negative impacts through the matrix is not intended to discourage or eliminate a certain development approach but rather to alert the designer/developer to aspects that may need further consideration or mitigation. Selecting one approach may dictate others. However, choosing a package of approaches that creates minimum impact at the lowest energy cost would probably result in the most appropriate design for sustainability.
View
the chart: Interpretation and Sustainable Development
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Interpretation
Chapter 3: Natural
Resources
Chapter 4:CulturalResources
Chapter 5: Site Design
Chapter 6: Building
Design
Chapter 7: Energy Management
Chapter 8: Water Supply
Chapter 9: Waste
Prevention
Chapter 10: Facility
Maintenance and Operations
Bibliography
