Celebrating ‘World Tourism Day’
By: Irfan Ahmad Mir
It is World Tourism Day 2024 and let me commence this column with the poetic lines of William Wordsworth, “Little we see in nature that is ours; we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon”.
This poetic verse contains a pressing message for the current generation. The author laments that humans have given away their emotional and spiritual connection to nature in exchange for material gains. We don’t consider ourselves as a part of nature. Else, we exploit the nature for personal gains. Finally, nature attacks us back.
As per a report, Kerala’s Wayanad region was struck by a catastrophic landslide this year in which more than 250 people lost their precious lives and hundreds of people got injured. Many families lost their loved ones and some lost their only bread earners. This was just a minute respond from the nature to the human invasion.
This reminds me a poetic verse of an anonymous poet, “Somewhere in my heart, there is a buried pain; can’t be shown to anyone whoever even cares for me”. This year, we also went through a painful day in our Jammu and Kashmir itself when a massive landslide hit some regions of Jammu in which many people lost their lives and thousands of people left homeless.
Besides this, Sonamarg and some other places in Kashmir also witnessed massive natural disasters in which we have lost precious lives. It is because of such incidents, hearts are exploding with pain and eyes tear up in empathy.
The theme of this year’s World Tourism Day is “Tourism and Peace”. First and the foremost, we all require environmental peace and in other language it is known as ecological balance. Once we get environmental peace, obviously tourism will boom to its highest level. Political unrest should be the secondary concern at the moment because we are facing ecological imbalance caused by human invasion. We can timely stop political unrest but we can’t stop natural disasters. Even powerful nations have no control over it. Every country is facing one or the other natural disaster day in and day out. So the primary concern for all the countries, governments and businesses must be environmental peace.
In other words, we all shall adopt the Sustainable and Responsible model of tourism. In my opinion, this is the only solution to all the pressing concerns of Tourism Industry. Sustainable Tourism contributes peace and prosperity in a nation by creating new jobs, involving local community which creates understanding between the people of different places and cultural interaction which promotes love and respect for each other.
Like other countries, India also witnessed a severe heatwave in 2024, with temperatures exceeding 45 degree Celsius in over 37 cities and causing huge human and economic losses. The damage caused by climate change is significantly affecting livelihoods and living conditions, pushing more people into poverty and degrading the circumstances of those who are already poor and vulnerable.
A report reveals that in August 2024 global surface temperature ranked warmest since global records began in 1850, making it the 15th consecutive record warm month. August was the second consecutive hottest month in Asia, a pressing concern for the whole continent and the world in general. This year India witnessed a scorching heatwave across the country, resulting plenty of causalities and heartstrokes.
As per a report of Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, more than 700 people died in India due to extreme heatwave this year. This is what climate change can do and all this happen because of our devil deeds and activities. The agony of climate change doesn’t stop there. Air Pollution which is again caused due to human activities is a major source of mortality rate worldwide. Big factories and industries release Sulfur Dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and Particulate Matter (PM) which are the major source of air pollution. Farming produces pollutants like Ammonia (NH3) from fertilizers and Methane (CH4) from livestock, which deteriorates the air quality and contributes to global warming and ultimately different natural disasters strike us in different forms.
Recently, a speedy wind hit the ripe apple orchards of Kulgam district, resulting the loss of lakhs of rupees. According to the 2024 State of Global Air Report, air pollution accounted for 8.1 million deaths globally in 2021, becoming the second leading factor for death. Let us keep all the types of pollution aside, whether it is air pollution, water pollution or soil pollution. At the present times, I believe that the main driver of some major types of pollution is “Tourism Industry” itself.
Tourism, no matter is the top GDP contributor for the countries but how can we ignore its severe negative impacts on environment, culture and society as a whole. Tourism industry is an amalgamation of many other industries like Hotel, Aviation, Water transport, Railways and so on. We can’t separate aviation industry from the tourism sector. Aviation Industry is the major source of air pollution. Similarly, Hotel Industry is the major source of soil and water pollution.
Water based tourism transportation also imbalance the ecosystem of water bodies by releasing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. Additionally, the unhealthy tourist practices and activities at a destination have shown disappointing results. We can’t walk away from the reality that in Kashmir plenty of tourist destinations are on journey to decline due to human invasion. This time we have gone through a record breaking summer heatwave in our valley, giving us a message that we have too looted our natural resources for personal gains.
Everybody of us is responsible for these untoward circumstances whether it is our government, local community, a stakeholder or a tourist. Even United Nations (UN) Chief Antonio Guterres accused governments and business leaders of the countries of lying about their efforts to stem climate change. He said that, “Some government and business leaders are saying one thing but doing another”. Such approach will be catastrophic and may result in worldwide crises.
Our government’s first priority should be the conservation of natural resources instead of increasing only GDP from the Tourism Industry. We are far away from the roles and responsibilities we ought to perform. If we continue our pessimistic approach towards our nature then, we shall not expect something good in return.
The damage caused by us to our nature can only be revived once we play a role of a responsible person. Furthermore, a proper tourism policy shall get framed and implemented on the ground zero level. Professional people shall get chance to serve the tourism industry over unprofessional and unskilled. Such steps will bring a new revolution to this industry.
(The author is a Vocational Teacher of Tourism & Hospitality at Government Girls Higher Secondary School Kothibagh, Srinagar)
