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Case Study: The Taj Mahal Case
In 1984, the Taj Mahal case was brought by MC Mehta, a leading environmental activist, to protect India's Taj Mahal from air pollution, alleging that industrial emissions were causing the white marble to blacken in places and fungus to grow inside the monument. Mehta requested the implementation of anti-pollution measures or the closure of the pollution causing industries. Over the course of litigation, the Supreme Court passed many orders directing the central, state and local authorities to undertake developmental and regulatory measures for the improvement of the environment and the protection of the Taj Mahal.
However, it was not until 1996 that the Court, finding that industries in the area were actively contributing to air pollution, finally ordered 292 coal-based industries to either switch to the use of natural gas or relocate their businesses outside the protected area, with job security or compensatory measures required for employees. While a number of factories complied with the order, many others ignored the order, claiming the cost of such action was prohibitive. Thus, in 1999, the Court ordered 160 factories closed for failure to comply with the order.
TEXT 11. TOURISM
"Tourism is like fire. It can cook your food or burn your house down." (Quote by R. Fox on UNEP website). This quote aptly illustrates the complex relationship between the environment and tourism, the world's biggest industry. On one hand, the quality of the environment is essential to tourism, and tourism itself can contribute to environmental conservation by raising awareness of environmental concerns, financing protection of natural areas and increasing their economic importance. However, tourism also involves many activities that can adversely affect the environment, gradually destroying the environmental resources on which it depends.
The three main environmental effects of tourism are:
• Depletion of natural resources,
• Pollution, and
• Physical impacts.
At the global level, these environmental effects can contribute to loss of biological diversity, depletion of the ozone layer and climate change - problems that led in part to the 1989 Hague Declaration on Tourism. The Hague Declaration recognizes that tourism is now an everyday phenomenon for millions of people and constitutes an activity essential to the lives of human beings and modern society. Moreover, tourism can be an effective instrument for socio-economic growth for all countries, but it requires the development of proper infrastructure and careful consideration of the overall capacity of the natural, physical and cultural environment of tourist destination. (Principle 2). Specifically, a healthy natural, cultural and human environment is a fundamental condition for the development of tourism. (Principle 3). To that end, the Declaration advocates taking effective measures to inform and educate tourists to respect the environment and to promote sustainable development.
Furthering the concept of what constitutes sustainable tourism, in 1995 the World Travel and Tourism Environment Research Centre developed the concept of Integrated Total Quality Tourism Management (ITQT), which is a holistic approach to tourism development and management that comprehensively integrates socio-cultural, environmental and economic aspects. It recognizes that tourism is not necessarily desirable or feasible for every place. Therefore, each community should examine if the project in question is feasible, sustainable and desirable with regard to socio-cultural, environmental and economic aspects, using such methods as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Carrying Capacity Analysis (CCA), Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA), and Environmental Audits (EA). Under ITQT, a genuinely sustainable approach needs to be not only environmentally sustainable and economically viable, but socio-culturally enriching as well, undertaken with integrated long-term planning, management and monitoring.
In the Manila Declaration on Social Impact of Tourism, adopted in the Philippines in May 1997, representatives of governments and private groups from 77 countries and territories committed themselves to ten goals aimed at maximizing the positive aspects and minimizing the negative effects of tourism. The goals of the Manila Declaration aspire to improve people's standard of living through tourism while at the same time ensuring that tourism development preserves the legacy, heritage and integrity of tourism destinations, particularly the social and cultural norms of indigenous communities, and takes into account the environmental costs of tourism. The tenth goal entails working towards the formulation and eventual adoption of a Global Code of Ethics for Tourism.
In fact, the tenth goal was reached on October 1, 1999, when members of the World Tourism Organization established the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism in Santiago, Chile. The aim of the Code is to synthesize the various documents, codes and declarations of the same kind or with comparable aspirations published over the years, and to complement them with new considerations reflecting the development of societies around the world, thus serving as a frame of reference for the stakeholders in world tourism. The Code operates under the beliefs that tourism contributes to mutual understanding and respect between peoples, and that there is a universal right to tourism as the common heritage of mankind. Moreover, the Code asserts that all stakeholders in tourism development should safeguard the natural environment for both present and future generations by protecting the natural heritage composed of ecosystems and biodiversity, preserving endangered species of wildlife, saving rare and precious resources, and respecting artistic, archaeological and cultural heritage. Suggested methods for accomplishing such objectives include the staggering in time and space of tourist and visitor flows, and using financial resources derived from visits to cultural sites and monuments for the upkeep, safeguard, development and embellishment of this heritage.