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Tourism Carrying Capacity Assessment |
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The Tourism Carrying Capacity Assessment concept emerged from the Rio Conference, sharing the same key principles of Agenda 21:
- the concept of integrated local development;
- the visualisation of alternative future scenarios;
- the importance of carrying out development work using indicators related to sustainability and the quality of local life;
- the importance of establishing partnerships with the private sector;
- the importance of citizens´ participation
- and the objective of achieving a whole series of action programmes in the short, medium and long term.
The Carrying Capacity strategy is a response to the need for change in many mature tourist destinations. The experience gained while carrying out several TCCA studies have shown that tourism is, to a certain extent, one of the activities that is fairly easily adaptable to sustainability criteria.
The Tourism Carrying Capacity Assessment is a methodology formulated by the Priority Actions Programme Regional Activity Centre (PAP/RAC) of the Mediterranean Action Plan – UNEP – within the framework of the action plan entitled "Development of Mediterranean Tourism Harmonized with the Environment".
With the active participation of 14 Mediterranean countries, the centre has been promoting activities relating to the "Development of Mediterranean Tourism Harmonized with the Environment " for 17 years. The launch of this activity in 1985 was based on the experience of MAP at that time, which indicated that socio-economic trends, linked both to poor management and development planning, were the cause of most environmental problems. In addition to this, it emphasised that environmental protection should be closely linked to social and economic development. At the beginning of 1994, drawing from the experience obtained through the work carried out during the first phase of the activity, a team of experts drafted the “Guidelines for Carrying Capacity Assessment for Tourism in Mediterranean Coastal Areas”. These guidelines aim to provide a comprehensive methodological document and a procedure for the analysis and assessment of the carrying capacity tool, and to incorporate it into the integrated planning and management of Mediterranean coastal areas.
The carrying capacity of a tourist resort may be defined as:
The maximum number of people that may visit a tourist destination at the same time, without causing destruction of the physical, economic and socio-cultural environment and an unacceptable decrease in the quality of the visitors' satisfaction.
Such an approach to the concept of carrying capacity assessment in many Mediterranean countries resulted from the fact that most of the experts dealing with it came from highly developed countries in Western Europe and USA. These areas were, at the same time, the main generators of tourist demand. Due to a considerably higher level of general development, those countries had higher standards of carrying capacity and more resources to implement the necessary measures, especially in the ecological and infrastructure spheres. At the same time, due to similar habits and attitudes of the local population and tourists, the socio-cultural sphere was largely neglected in those countries or burdened by the so called “ecological” approach. This approach aimed to place the local population of less developed tourist destinations under some sort of “glass bell”, or in a “test tube” for study. This is why the old concept of CCA was only applicable to highly developed Mediterranean countries with similar level of civilisation and similar structure of local population and tourists, such as France, Italy and Spain. It was somewhat less appropriate for medium developed countries such as Croatia, Greece and Turkey. It was not applicable at all to most countries of the Southern Mediterranean littoral.
PAP promotes a flexible approach to tourism TCCA. This approach is based on the development of multifaceted tourism development scenarios, incorporating various viewpoints ranging from those of the industry to those of ecologists. The sustainable tourism option is the common derivative of the TCCA process on the basis of which TCCA is defined. The understanding of what carrying capacity assessment means in the field of tourism has been evolving over the years, from an abstract concept to easily measurable physical and ecological parameters to socio-demographic and socio-cultural parameters which are not so easily quantified.
With the increased role of state administration in tourism development planning, primarily through economic incentives or restrictions (tax policy, construction of large infrastructural systems, etc.), the importance of political and economic parameters has become greater. This means that there is a need for a special process to determine the carrying capacity of a place, particularly in the medium and less developed Mediterranean countries to which the Guidelines are primarily written for. This process was first tested within the study implemented in the Island of Rhodes in Greece.
The Rhodes TCCA study can be definitely considered as a key case which resulted in the final definition of PAP methodology for Carrying Capacity Assessment (subsequently the "Guidelines for Carrying Capacity Assessment in Mediterranean Coastal Zones" were produced). Moreover, the proposal of having two equally treated development scenarios, both considered as a form of intensive, but controlled, tourism development has been included as a further innovation of the methodology.
Nowadays, the Tourism Carrying Capacity Assessment has become one of the main techniques for tourism and recreation planning and management. Its aim is to determine the upper desirable limits of development which corresponds to the optimal use of tourism resources. There are numerous examples of tourist destinations where the carrying capacity has been largely exceeded, the consequences being the degradation of natural and cultural attractions and the weakening of the tourism market. It has also become clear that the free market without active planning and protection negatively affects the environment and is a direct cause of the loss of interest in some destinations on the part of tourists.
Although the concept of TCCA proposed by the UNEP’s Guidelines represents a more adaptable structure which makes it applicable all over the Mediterranean, some TCCA studies prepared without the PAP methodology, such as Calvià Municipality on the island of Mallorca in Spain have proved to be successful.
Indeed, the municipality of Calvià represents one of the most advanced example of sustainable tourism development programme in the Mediterranean. The first result, after five years of activities, was the demolition of those hotels along the coast which had proven to be obsolete and detrimental to the environment and replaced by constructions which do not harm the environment. The TCCA’s study in Calvià proved that the status quo had much in common with ageing resorts throughout the Mediterranean. It is therefore reasonable to assume that many of the solutions and objectives derived from the Calvià experience could have a wider application.
During the development of the TCCA studies, motivations other than merely assessing the carrying capacity of a given area, which were not always described at the beginning of the study, became essential and very strategic. In many cases what seems to be one of the most common motivations for applying the TCCA methodology is the expansion of the limited tourist season, so that, ideally, year-round season can be achieved. Another strong motivation appears to be the development of a methodology, which scientifically analyses the tourism sector in the long-term, while simultaneously successfully involving all the stakeholders in the tourism process, in order to facilitate and secure the formulation and implementation of an efficient sustainable tourism plan.
The experience of the Province of Rimini
The TCCA study in Rimini, carried out in 2001, was the first application of PAP’s methodology in a mass tourism destination and the result was a very specific application of the PAP methodology. The Province of Rimini used sustainable tourism indicators not only to assess the data and to describe the destination’s state-of-the-art, but also to create a development plan. The continuous exchanges between PAP experts and local ones were useful to adjust the methodology to the specific needs of the Province of Rimini.
The TCCA study is unique because of the integration of the methodology within the Integrated Costal Management Plan.
Additionally, the Plan for the management of the coastal area has been integrated within the Local Agenda 21 plans. This meant that to define medium-term objectives had to be defined in order to be inserted to be inserted within the Local Agenda process to reach the final goal identified by the TCCA methodology. The strategy implemented allowed to define new pilot projects aimed to achieve related targets and spread positive results.
The TCCA study definitely played an important role in implementing appropriate public policies – at territorial level and in terms of infrastructures – and a further participation of the private sector – such as the contribution from the hotel operators to water and energy consumption reduction and waste production policies. Therefore, the study defined a framework for a deeper analysis of the relation between tourism, environment and sustainable management of resources.
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The decision to carry out a TCCA has been strongly supported at the political level, as was the case in Rimini, Malta and Calvia. As a result, these municipalities limited their carrying capacity. In these areas, local actors (i.e. the local communities which did not want mass tourism) and industrial actors encouraged a more sustainable development. For example, the fact that the Maltese economy depends upon tourism, automatically led to the need for proper planning.
During the preparation of TCCA studies using the PAP methodology, the experiences of two highly developed and already saturated tourist destinations like Malta and Rimini, raised some new questions that this methodology should answer. Following the PAP Guidelines, in order to be used in developed areas, the TCCA methodology should be enriched with some new elements that would anticipate the requirements of this context. It is clear that there are no stringent rules and formulae to assess an area’s tourism carrying capacity, as each area has its own unique characteristics. Given these examples, it is therefore necessary to promote this methodology as one applicable all around the Mediterranean as a structural framework within which other techniques, such as sustainable tourism indicators, can be included.
The experience of the Island of Malta
Effective implementation of TCCA depends on the political will to re-orient tourism development. In Malta, following the decision to conduct the study, a TCCA multi-disciplinary study group was set up with the objective of identifying the parameters of the study, as well as collecting and analysing relevant data. A part from being technically-skilled, the members of the Study Group also worked for key organisations whose participation was crucial to the success of the study group, not only for the collection of data, but also to better understand and implement recommendations.
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It is therefore necessary to incorporate TCCA in the tourism planning and management process. TCCA should be considered as a set of instructions for the formulation of tourist plans at all levels. Past experiences in coastal regions in particular, proved that the public and private sector are likely to equally benefit from the TCCA. Indeed, the interests of the public sector (protection of tourism resources) and those of entrepreneurs (protection of the market, and of profitability) are co-incidental in the long run.
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Web creation  - Fotografie Andrea Amato |
