Environmental auditing: A tool in ecotourism development

The concept of ecotourism is seen to be quite synonymous with that of alternative forms of tourism. Its development in recent years has proved that further enlargement of ecotourism’s segment, in the future, is possible. Despite this growth, the definitional approaches of the concept have been misleading and have often created a confusion among practitioners in the industry. It is these confused theories of ecotourism that have presumably contributed to the prevailing attitude in managing the concept. Taking into consideration the fragility of the environment in conjunction with the sensitivity of ecotourism visits to sites, the use of environmental auditing is important. Environmental auditing concentrates its application on identifying the present and potential environmental impacts on the ecosystems. Starting with a description of the basic environmental elements (water, waste etc) environmental auditing progresses to detail the impacts to each element through the use of environmental indicators. In overall terms, this technique can assist the resources’ managers to safeguard their assets within the sites, and to implement their ecotourism strategies. This paper describes and views the concept of ecotourism as a sub-component of natural tourism. It will outline the need to exercise environmental auditing as a technique which monitors the environmental impacts throughout the tourism life cycle of a site, while safeguarding and sustainably managing the resources. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.