dossier sur le tourisme et le développement durable

Tourism and the Environment
80 000, Spain 66 000 and Greece 6 000 (Table 8). There is a serious demand for places,
increased by the low using of these boats (on average 15 days per year in France) and by
moderate recourse to renting: in France boat rental amounts to only 3 000 boats while in Italy
44 companies share 6 000 rental contracts per year.
Although yachts benefit from a positive environmental image (contact with nature, sailing), their
impact on the environment is also considerable. The construction of harbours (space
consumption, destruction of fauna and flora) and their maintenance (dredging) have an obvious
environmental impact, but the individual upkeep of the boats (use of paint, detergents, engine
maintenance, fuel supply) can also be a contributing factor to pollution. Harbours are often
places where there is intensive chemical and bacteriological pollution, which spreads to the
environment.
Lastly, as the boat is the pleasure-tripper’s living space, this poses daily problems of wastewater
and of waste both in the harbour and in moorings. Most pleasure boats have toilets with direct
rejection of waste. EEC directive 94/25 provides for boats to be equipped with chemical toilets
or with a storing device for wastewater. The decree applies to new boats on the market. As the
fleet of existing boats will take a long time to be renewed, waste water discharge will be a
source of pollution for many years to come, especially in the more used moorings. During
summer, the saturation of Calvi harbour, France, engenders the development of open berths
that can hold 200 units, i.e. a population of 800 to 1 000 people on the water. On the coast of
the Island of Porquerolles up to 800 boats have been counted in moorings. Besides this, open
berths are often synonymous with macro-waste rejection, with destruction of the sea bed
(especially of posidonia bed) due to anchors and even of some undesirable plant species such
as Caulerpa taxifolia.
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