dossier sur le tourisme et le développement durable

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Tourism and the Environment
These days the islands are becoming tourism monoculture areas with high concentrations of
tourists. Sometimes there can be a density of over 3 000 tourists per square kilometre per year
like in Majorca, Malta or the Island of Elba (Table 10). Some of the Greek islands in the Aegean
sea have high concentrations of tourists, more than 1.5 beds per inhabitant (Figure 18).
Table 10: The density of tourists on some Mediterranean islands
Island Number of tourists per km² and per year
Cyprus 130
Corfu 1 000
Corsica 190
Crete 150
Elba 3 600
Djerba 1 800
Majorca 3 700
Malta 3 800
Sardinia 110
Sicily
Source: Kerourio, 2000
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The insular areas have to face specific kinds of tourist influx depending on their size and their
distance from the continent. The larger islands and the State islands are the most visited (with
the Balearic islands in first place). But when we consider relationships between the tourist
population and the local population, together with the tourist rate, it can be noted that the
smaller islands suffer the most from tourism: degradation of the ecosystems and landscapes,
problems linked to water supply, saturation, conflicts of interest, and so on. It is harder to
manage these problems than to manage those on the continental coastlines.
Visits in peak periods to the small islands near the coast require careful management to avoid
fires, the trampling of the fragile areas and the disturbing of fauna. On the larger islands,
problems connected with the natural area are only part of the perceptible impact. Water supply
is a problem but a less critical one because often there are hydrological features near the
continental ones, such as catchment areas and permanent waterways. Yet, it should be pointed
out that in order to satisfy the needs of a growing summer population, recourse to costly
importation of water by boat or by desalting is needed. There are 70 desalting plants for the
production of drinking water on the islands: Cyprus, the Italian islands, Malta and the Balearic
Isles.
Besides this, some tourists such as in the Balearic Isles set up residence in their holiday homes.
This encourages the phenomenon of gnawing of landscape and conflicts of interest with the
local population (farmers, ramblers, landowners). The unique activity of tourism, and the urban
development that it brings with it, weighs heavily on the coastline, giving problems of waste
management and discharges, the damaging of landscapes and of the coastal environment, and
so on.