bajajudy
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Water issues on the SOC
The Green Line: Tourism and water issues require full participation
BY TALLI NAUMAN/The Herald Mexico
El Universal
Domingo 04 de junio de 2006
With tourism constituting the world?s largest industry, a coalition of 18 conservation groups in northwestern Mexico is trying to bring home the
principals of sustainability in this economic sector that were outlined by the United Nations in Agenda 21 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development way back in 1992.
The coalition is Alcosta, the Alliance for the Sustainability of the Northwest Mexican Coast. Its groundbreaking preliminary study based on monitoring
of 48 coastal tourist developments, just released this spring, provides an unprecedented scientific starting point from which to gauge efforts to
protect opportunities for current and future generations.
As it well deserves, Alcosta has support in this effort from the International Ecotourism Society, the Sustainable Ecotourism and Public Policy
Institute of Stanford University, The Nature Conservancy, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
The monitoring is a stepping stone toward the mark of creating effective region-wide control for natural resource management in the Gulf of California
states: Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Baja California Sur, and Baja California. This management must be strengthened to provide public information and
input for expanding protected areas and improving their operation, for preventing species extinction, and for saving the ecosystems on which tourist
jobs depend.
Other than monitoring, Alcosta is also working on outlining the best practices for sustainable tourism in the gulf region and on a compendium of
success stories based on viable policies and regulatory instruments worldwide.
The monitoring, undertaken by six community groups, reveals that 66 percent of the gulf?s coastal tourist development is in the form of hotel or
condominium building associated with golf courses and marinas. Baja California Sur has the highest rate of construction development of all the states
in the region.
Gulfwide, 17 percent of the development is in places where some tourism pole already existed, and 48 percent is in spots with none before. The growth
areas coincide with those pinpointed by the federal Tourism Secretariat?s megaproject originally called the Nautical Stairway and later renamed to
"Sea of Cortes". This growth entails land speculation and sale of ejido properties previously held in trust status.
With 34,000 hotel and condominium units operating or under construction, including 45 golf courses, the demands on the natural resources are
overwhelming. The influx of workers and their families who come to build and service this phenomenon signifies a population boom that the region is in
no way prepared to absorb.
For these tourism ventures to be sustainable they must not exceed the available water supply or contaminate it, and they must be able to handle the
waste their attraction of visitors and workers generates. This is a huge challenge, given that all the communities face water shortage problems even
before further development, none have adequate sanitary landfill facilities, only 6 percent have sewage treatment, precipitation in the gulf region is
among the lowest in the country, 17 percent of the underground water tables are over exploited and 10 percent experience salt water intrusion.
The problems loom even larger than life because of lack of enforcement and consequent environmental lawbreaking. People who depend on farming and
fishing in the same communities where tourism development is booming find competition for the resources a threat to their livelihoods. In many cases,
this is already leading to emigration.
What Alcosta wisely advises under the circumstances is to follow the recommendations of the World Tourism Organization: Involve the social groups in
tourism promotion and create networks of small businesses that can take part in it.
This looks simple on paper. But much of the growth and development is powered by foreign and outside investors and politicians. In point of fact,
Alcosta has discovered that not a single hotel-condominium effort has involved local people in determining an outcome favorable to them, nor has any
initiative emerged to link or strengthen small business toward that end.
It?s pretty clear from the preliminary results of the study what needs to be done in that regard. There?s no time like the present to get started.
After all, Mexico?s official commitment to Agenda 21 transcends political administrations.
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