| inbluevt | Date: Saturday, 2013/06/29, 10:29 AM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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Tourism is generally viewed as a local concern. Yet considered as a whole, it is responsible for a whopping $6.5 trillion of the global economy and employs 1 in 12. When seeing tourism as a single, albeit far flung enterprise, the concerns to the environment and heritage sites, as well as local economies, comes more sharply into focus. I am currently reading "OVERBOOKED" by Elizabeth Becker which discusses all these issues seen from this perspective. What has just happened in India would not come as a surprise to her, not in the least.
The article begins:
As India picks up the pieces from the worst-ever flash floods in the Himalayas,
the nation is beginning to wonder to what extent human intervention –
specifically religious tourism and hydroelectric projects – contributed to the disaster.
About 1,000 people have been confirmed dead in Uttarakhand state from last week's flooding, and state authorities say the actual toll could be three to five times higher.The Himalayas are a relatively young mountain range with a fragile geology prone to landslides. The deluge on 17 June destroyed towns, villages, roads and bridges for more than 60 miles along the banks of the Mandakini and the Alaknanda, two important tributaries of the Ganges river.
The origin of the disaster is beyond dispute: a glacier ruptured under the pressure of water from a severe cloudburst, raining tonnes of ice, water and rock on the Hindu pilgrimage town of Kedarnath,
on the left bank of the Mandakini.
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Message edited by inbluevt - Saturday, 2013/06/29, 10:30 AM |
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