Tourism and environmental decision-making (Costa Rica)

As environmental resource utilization conflicts escalate globally within and among competing industries, there is a need for careful utilization and conservation of resources. A term that has gained considerable currency with regard to resource allocation is sustainable development. Tourism is an industry whose sustainability is dramatically affected by land-based resource competition. While there are diverging opinions regarding the nature, pace and forms of tourism, one must nevertheless acknowledge its profound environmental, economic and social effects upon the landscape. Tourism has come to represent financial security in many developing regions and shows no sign of weakening.; Given that environmental information is a building block necessary in the planning of sustainable tourism development, the collection and use of this information at the national level needs evaluation. To this end a survey was sent to 208 governments to determine the extent and use of environmental information. It was discovered that a majority of responding nations do collect and use environmental information to develop plans and create tourism policy.; As governments, host communities and private investors determine that tourism is a preferred method of development for a region, consideration must be given to a specific site's suitability. Tools are needed to facilitate informed site decisions by community members, government decision makers and project developers. If the forces upon our own diminishing environment from tourism development are to be addressed, an environmentally-based tourism planning system must be developed, evaluated, and adopted. Due to its success in agriculture and forestry, both resource-based industries, the FAO framework for land evaluation is just such a tool to facilitate stake-holder decisions with regard to site suitability.; Spatial and analytic tools and the FAO framework are then combined to create a site identification spatial decision support system for tourism land evaluation. The framework was demonstrated in a case study in northwestern Costa Rica, which identified 4,400 hectares of suitable land for coastal tourism. The success of the proposed framework is demonstrated by the potential for higher economic returns to investors from hotels sited in areas identified as suitable for hotel development by the Strategic Framework.