Role of Tourism in Environmental Degradation and Disaster: A Case from Uttarakhand, India

Humans itself do not create disasters rather, work as a catalyst in hazard generation by interfering the functioning of natural processes; which ultimately prove to be disastrous and result in severe deprivations of physical and cultural resources, and the lives of humans and animals also. Tourism is one such activity; as unplanned and uncontrolled tourism activities are affecting the mountain ecosystem and its sustainability too much and causing great damages to the harmonious environmental setup. In the past few decades; tourism, leisure, and fun making have even taken place of pilgrimage in the mountains, due to it a large size of the population is entering into the mountains, causing heavy pressure on natural resources, ultimately leading to environmental degradation and human induced disasters.

Uttarakhand, a mountainous state at present is a good example of unplanned, uncontrolled, and unsustainable tourism practices, all these have facilitated the human induced disasters; as the state is witnessing the recent disaster of June 16, 2013, this disaster has taken thousands of lives of the pilgrims and tourists from various Indian states and local peoples of Uttarakhand, and caused thousands of cores of economic and infrastructural losses. Uttarakhand Disaster Recovery Project Draft assisted by World Bank estimated that 580 lives were lost and more than 5,200 peoples were missing. Total 4,200 villages were affected; more than 3,320 houses were fully damaged and 9,000 cattle were lost. The economy and society of the state are facing lots of problems; as thousands of people are left without home, food, and employment by the disaster. Pilgrimage and tourism industry of the state are at risk and its negative impacts will be enormous.

In this paper an attempt has been made to evaluate the role of rapidly increasing tourists and tourism in environmental degradation and disaster generation with remedial measures.