Biodiversity in Southern nations is a
significant attraction for Northern tourism: reefs and
rainforests, whales and wildflowers, big game and biological
rarities. It is therefore in the interests of international
tourism to help conserve international biodiversity. The
role of tourism in biodiversity conservation is especially
significant in Southern nations because many Southern
nations have particularly rich biodiversity but weak legal,
land-use allocation, and development control systems,
and protected area agencies with few funds and little
political power. Northern tourism can provide incentives
to conserve biodiversity through foreign exchange and
economic opportunities for Southern governments and local
communities. They can also buy private land for tourism
and conservation, and lobby against logging and land clearance
and other high-impact land uses.
Northern
tourism also relies on Northern biodiversity. Currently,
tourism growth is a significant threat to many Northern
protected areas. As a high-value use, tourism should displace
primary industries in public and private lands of high
biodiversity outside the protected area system, rather
than inside parks. For political reasons, however, this
rarely happens at present.
