This is bad publicity without which the Calanques National Park and the Etretat cliffs would have done just fine. The two French sites are in the ranking of the 10 destinations to avoid according to the American tourist guide company Fodor’s Travel. Not because these places are not worth visiting, but because mass tourism is endangering their sustainability. For Fodor’s Travel, this ranking is all the more interesting since 2022 was marked by a large number of climatic disasters, almost 30 according to the American company that mentions the monsoon in Pakistan, hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Florida or more heat waves and drought in Europe. .
“For all the good it can do to support local economies and connect cultures, tourism is a significant contributor to climate change. […] As climate change intensifies, the damage could make popular destinations inhospitable to travelers and cause their economies to collapse.”
Fodor’s Travel regrets that tourism numbers have returned to their pre-pandemic level as of last spring and deplores the trend towards increased travel that already contributes 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The company’s website classifies these 10 destinations into three categories: places of cultural interest that are victims of overcrowding and resource depletion, places directly affected by the water crisis, and natural attractions in need of recharging.
Highly harmful overcrowding
The cliffs of Etretat and the Calanques national park are listed in this third category which includes in particular places that “have been so damaged that tourist offices and elected officials have asked travelers not to visit them while the land is recovered, the air and the sea”.
These two natural sites, emblematic of the richness of France’s landscapes, are symptomatic of the spectacular erosion of the French coast “which has more to do with a storm of tourists than with the weather”, advances Fodor’s Travel.
The company’s website mentions, among other things, two consequences of mass tourism in the Normandy town of Etretat, which has recently experienced an increase in visitors following the broadcast of the hit series “Lupin” on Netflix. “Last year, the small town’s sewage treatment plant had to be shut down for maintenance because it couldn’t receive three times as many visitors as its usual population. More worryingly, landslides are frequent due to excess Pedestrian traffic”.
“We need tourism, but we have to find a balance. It is the tourists themselves who would benefit the most. Many of them leave in a rage after spending several hours in the car without being able to find parking, a place to eat or toilets, because there is not enough infrastructure. This mass tourism satisfies no one,” Jean-Baptiste Renié, a municipal councilor for Étretat, told France 24 last summer.
On the Calanques side, the national park has been affected by overcrowding for several years and has decided to establish a reservation system with a maximum of 400 people to go to its beaches that could attract up to 3,000 visitors a day in summer.
In this category, the two French locations rub shoulders with Californian Lake Tahoe, which fell victim to a huge wave of migration at the time of the pandemic that brought its share of pollution near the water point. We also find Antarctica, whose region of the peninsula “has experienced the fastest warming of temperatures and the most marked faunal decline in history” by concentrating the presence of ships and aircraft. These conveyances produce carbon black which accelerates the melting of ice.
damage around the world
Among cultural hotspots, Venice is arguably the best-known destination with quite a telling figure: each year, the ratio of visitors to residents is 370 to 1. This influx of tourists is particularly problematic for the level-threatened Italian city. from sea. boom and which has recently prohibited the presence of large cruise ships in its historic center.
Cornwall, in the far south-west of England, suffers from a lack of infrastructure to accommodate the waves of tourists who arrive there in high season.
Every year, Amsterdam welcomes the equivalent of the Dutch population, which has led to the introduction of various measures to ensure that the capital remains pleasant to live in.
Finally, Thailand has decided to start a transition from mass tourism (40 million visitors during the year 2019) to “high-level travelers” in the words of the Minister of Tourism to continue the preservation of its natural jewels made possible by closures related to the pandemic.
Finally, the last category is related to destinations under threat of severe water stress, a situation favored by mass tourism. The island of Maui, which is part of the Hawaiian archipelago, is affected by a situation of deep inequality in the use of fresh water, particularly restricted for the local population for the benefit of tourist complexes.
During the past summer, two thirds of the European continent were victims of a drought marked by the low levels of several rivers such as the Rhine or the Danube through which river cruises are organized. The situation is also critical in the western United States, where Lake Mead, located on the Colorado River and a popular tourist area, has just moved into Level 2 shortage status and is fast approaching “watershed” status. dead”. More than a million inhabitants of the states of California, Arizona and Nevada will soon be affected by water or even electricity cuts, the lake that allows the Hoover Dam to produce energy.
Source: BFM TV
