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| Unregulated rush to tourist spots detrimental to environment: Official report | | | Saqib Junaid
Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, May 16: With tourists from all over India and the world moving into Kashmir in droves, and the Government's failure in exploring new tourist destinations has put an immense pressure on the existing destinations and would result severe detrimental on environment in the state, an official report said.
Jammu and Kashmir has been spending a good portion of the budget on the promotion of tourism in the state. However, there are scores of destinations which are still inaccessible thus putting huge pressure on the existing ones.
The Environment department has warned that non-regulation of tourists in Kashmir would result in severe detrimental impact on environment in the state.
According to an official report of the Environment department, it says the unplanned and unprecedented growth of the tourism industry in the state has resulted in severe detrimental impact on environment in J&K.
The report says that unregulated tourists increase pollution, creating pressure on drinking water resources, lack of collection and disposal damages the environment and further it creates the problem of accommodation and congestion.
It says that the inflow of tourist beyond the carrying capacity of the tourist spots has put tremendous pressure on existing resources and infrastructure. It has suggested on exploring new destinations which will reduce the pressure on the existing tourist places.
According to the official figures, 1314432 domestic and foreign tourists visited the Valley in 2011 excluding the Amarnath yatris whose number was 634000. In 2012, the number of tourists and Amarnath Yatris was 1308765 and 621000 respectively.
The number of tourist arrivals dropped to 1171130 in 2013 and in 2014 their number was 116718. Over a 10 lakh tourists also visited in 2015.
However, most of these tourists visited only few selective tourist places as government has failed to develop other destinations which have the potential of becoming prime tourist destinations.
"We have only few tourist places which are having the requisite infrastructure. But government has failed to regulate the tourists in these places which proves detrimental to our environment," an official of Environment department said.
The official emphasized for developing of Eco-tourism concept saying, "We have to develop Eco-tourism concept in the state and one should go on cycles or ride on ponnies to tourist spots having fragile environment."
To make things worse, the state also suffers from major electricity shortages, which means hotels, restaurants, shops and commercial enterprises all use highly polluting diesel generators for hours every day. Environmentalists are fearful of the effect on the surrounding glaciers and endangered animals - like the snow leopard and the red deer - in the state's protected forests.
Moreover it has been seen that thousands of tourists and pilgrims visit tourist places having fragile environment which leads to degradation of environment mainly due to heavy fleet of vehicles carrying pilgrims and tourists close to these places.
A senior official of Tourism department said the department was to implement the tourism policy in the state which would help to regulate the tourists in the state.
"It will also help to upgrade the infrastructure at tourist destinations with proper water supply, sewage, drainage to ensure that environment is not affected," the official said.
"Under this policy, we will be able to regulate tourists to various destinations and make tourism an environment friendly sector." |
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