Environmental impacts of transport related to tourism and leisure activities

Mass tourism is a modern phenomenon, stemming primarily from the introduction of personal vehicles and motorised mass transport from the late 19th Century onwards, accelerating particularly after 1945 by the development of passenger airlines. Initially, mass tourism was a short-range phenomenon largely within nation states, but is now global with tourists from developed countries visiting almost all parts of the globe.

The greatest ecological threats that mass tourism poses undoubtedly lie in the infrastructure and transport arrangements required to support it, particularly in situations where numbers of tourists are subject to little control. Physical development of resorts, consumption of fuel by buildings, aircraft, trains, buses, taxis and cars, overuse of water resources, pollution by vehicle emissions, sewage and litter all contribute to substantial, often irreversible environmental degradation, as well as to dramatic social consequences. The first part of the chapter focuses on the transport-related aspects of these large-scale problems.

The second part of the chapter is aimed at assessing the ecological impact of individual leisure transport. This has developed from a simple matter of walking or horse riding that sufficed for centuries, through bicycle touring and leisure boating that burgeoned at the end of the 19th Century, to the use of high-powered four-wheel drives, snowmobiles and jet skis by 21st Century leisure consumers.

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