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 Table 2: Interpretation and Sustainable Development
