Man-Made Impacts on Emerging Geoparks in the Asian Region
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REVIEW ARTICLE
Man-Made Impacts on Emerging Geoparks in the Asian Region Daminda Sumanapala 1 & Isabelle D. Wolf 2 Received: 9 November 2019 / Accepted: 30 June 2020 # The European Association for Conservation of the Geological Heritage 2020
Abstract Geotourism is an emerging sub-sector of nature-based tourism that attracts a growing number of tourists to geoparks worldwide. Among these, Asian geoparks have become an attractive destination for visitors to experience geological landscapes. To date, there are limited studies available on the environmental impacts of geotourism in Asian geoparks. Here, we present a quantitative review of 26 peer-reviewed publications on geotourism impacts in Asia and discuss how to minimise them. The majority of these studies (64%) originated in China and reports on observational research (68%) rather than experimental research (11%). Data were mainly qualitative (48%) rather than quantitative (19%). Impacts accrued from an inadequate provision of conservation measures and infrastructure (leading to soil erosion), associated agriculture and urbanization, a lack of legislative frameworks and a lack of knowledge of visitors and local communities on how to behave in sensitive geosites. Management measures that appear promising were discussed such as the establishment of frameworks and policies to govern geotourism development along with visitor education and the critical importance of systematic quantitative studies. Both should support the rapidly growing geotourism industry in the Asian region. Keywords Geotourism . Geoparks . Man-made impacts . Overtourism . Asia
Introduction Geotourism is a rapidly growing tourism market attracting approximately 7.8 million geo-tourists to geotourism destinations worldwide (Cheung 2015). The development of this industry relies upon geological landscapes as attractions (Hose 2000; Dowling and Newsome 2010; Wang et al. 2014a). Geotourism has emerged in the mid 1990s (Ollier 2012), underpinned by various definitions (Hose 1995; Dowling and Newsome 2010; National Geographic 2012) that stress three elements of geotourism: (a) travel to a place characterised by geology, (b) education and learning and (c) geological appreciation (Fung and Jim 2015; Hose 1995; Joyce 2006). There is also a certain overlap with the concept of nature-based tourism (Koizumi and Chakraborty 2016).
* Daminda Sumanapala [email protected] 1
School of Veterinary and Life Science, Murdoch University, 90 South Street, Murdoch, Perth, WA 6150, Australia
2
Australian Centre for Culture, Environment, Society and Space, School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
Koizumi and Chakraborty (2016) drew attention to a conceptualisation as “geo-ecotourism” that amalgamates understandings of geotourism with those of ecotourism (Gray 2011; Newsome et al. 2012). The currently presiding definition of geotourism by Dowling and Newsome (2010) is that of a form of “sustainable tourism with a primary focus on experien
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