Touring Ancient Times: The Present and Presented Past in Contemporary Peru

Peru offers important perspectives for understanding the presence of the past, particularly as expressed on various landscapes of national and local identity, social and political power, and economic development. As Peru's archaeological past is converted into a vast tourist project, contradictory, negotiated, and contested relationships are played out in a constantly changing drama, with ruins, indigenous people, ordinary city residents, foreign tourists, the Peruvian government, and the private sector as the actors. Concerned with how representations of the past are created and received differently by various groups in Peru, particularly in Cusco and Nazca, I show the importance of concentrating attention on the local context in which the pragmatics and poetics of archaeological tourism are orchestrated, demonstrating the insufficiency of studies focused exclusively on the role of nationalism/nationalist discourse in contemporary constructions of the past. [Keywords: Peru, tourism, authenticity, archaeological heritage, identity]     

Impacts of tourism on threatened plant taxa and communities in Australia

Summary Many Australian plant species and communities appear to be threatened by tourism. A review of management plans, recovery plans and a survey of experts found that tourism was considered to be a direct or indirect threatening process for 72 plant taxa. This is one fifth of threatened species for which threats have been identified. In addition, many more species are listed as threatened by weeds, trampling, pathogens, clearing and collecting. These are often indirect impacts of tourism, particularly in conservation reserves where tourism is the only commercial activity permitted. Tourism was also considered to be a threatening process for several plant communities. A lack of recognition of the importance of direct and indirect impacts of tourism may potentially hinder the conservation of plant species and communities both in Australia and overseas. It may also limit the effectiveness of sustainable tourism policies, particularly in conservation reserves.     

`Blue Lagoons and Coconut Palms‘: The Creation of a Tropical Idyll in Australia

The Great Barrier Reef is regarded as an ‘Australian icon’. It is an internationally recognised World Heritage site managed for its ‘natural’ values. However, it is a location where visitors rarely enjoy Australian landscapes. This paper contrasts the sensuous engagement of past visitors with contemporary tourist experiences. Analysis of historic and contemporary visual and written materials suggests that tourist landscapes of the Reef have been transformed significantly during the 20th century. In particular, experiences of Reef islands characterised by Australian bush have been displaced by those of a generic Pacific location. The coconut palm, as a symbol of earthly paradise, has played an important role in realising both an imagined landscape and the physical transformation of tourist locations. Whereas the tourism industry is often regarded as responsible for the promulgation of such generic images, this study suggests that they are the product of a shared imagination to which both the tourism industry and tourists subscribe.     

旅游地生态效率测度的SBM-DEA模型及实证分析

旅游地是典型的人地关系相互作用的特殊区域,旅游地的生态效率研究是其制定与实施包容性、持续性发展政策与措施的基础。采用基于时间序列、包含非期望产出的SBM-DEA模型方法,构建旅游地生态效率测度模型及评价指标体系,以黄山风景区为例,利用1981—2014年的投入产出数据,测度旅游地复合系统的生态效率,分析其演化特征和阶段,并利用Tobit回归模型对其影响因素进行实证检验。结果表明:(1)34年来,黄山风景区旅游生态效率(综合效率)不断提升,且具较大发展潜力,在分解效率中,技术效率较高,规模效率次之,规模效率是决定综合效率的关键因素;(2)旅游生态效率的演化经历了初期低效、快速成长、成熟高效、下行风险四个阶段,不同阶段效率的特征不同,影响因素也存在差异;(3)旅游生态效率完成了由规模报酬递增向递减的过渡,资源要素的投入冗余已成为现阶段阻碍生态效率的进一步提高的关键因素;(4)旅游发展水平、产业结构和技术水平对生态效率产生显著的正向影响,投资水平产生显著的负向影响,以废弃物末端治理为表征的环保规制对生态效率的提升作用并不显著。文章最后提出,在山岳型风景区发展初期,应尽可能扩大资源要素投入规模,进入成熟阶段后,则转向逐渐控制投入规模,改善技术能力和资源配置能力,摒弃过度依靠资源消耗和环境污染的粗放式发展模式,走精细化、可持续的发展道路。     

Tourism as a threat to critically endangered and endangered birds: global patterns and trends in conservation hotspots

More than 12 % of bird species are threatened with extinction. Numerous anthropogenic activities and processes are considered responsible for such declines, including tourism related activities. These activities often occur in global biodiversity hotspots but few studies consider the potential risks associated with tourism. The relative importance of tourism as a threat to birds was quantified using a global analysis of the threats facing critically endangered and endangered birds in the hotspots. Sixty-three critically endangered and endangered bird species are reportedly threatened by tourism. Among those 63 species, marine, coastal and aquatic birds are threatened more by tourism than was expected. Hotspots with the most species threatened by tourism are Polynesia–Micronesia and the Mediterranean Basin. This study uses individual threatening processes in a new way to characterise hotspots for conservation action, advancing previous identification criteria. Analysing hotspots in terms of the relative presence of individual threatening processes may help to more effectively direct future research in these priority regions.     

Medical tourism: globalization of the healthcare marketplace

The citizens of many countries have long traveled to the United States and to the developed countries of Europe to seek the expertise and advanced technology available in leading medical centers. In the recent past, a trend known as medical tourism has emerged wherein citizens of highly developed countries choose to bypass care offered in their own communities and travel to less developed areas of the world to receive a wide variety of medical services. Medical tourism is becoming increasingly popular, and it is projected that as many as 750,000 Americans will seek offshore medical care in 2007. This phenomenon is driven by marketplace forces and occurs outside of the view and control of the organized healthcare system. Medical tourism presents important concerns and challenges as well as potential opportunities. This trend will have increasing impact on the healthcare landscape in industrialized and developing countries around the world.     

The problematization of medical tourism: a critique of neoliberalism

The past two decades have seen the extensive privatisation and marketisation of health care in an ever reaching number of developing countries. Within this milieu, medical tourism is being promoted as a rational economic development strategy for some developing nations, and a makeshift solution to the escalating waiting lists and exorbitant costs of health care in developed nations. This paper explores the need to problematize medical tourism in order to move beyond one dimensional neoliberal discourses that have, to date, dominated the arena. In this problematization, the paper discusses a range of understandings and uses of the term 'medical tourism' and situates it within the context of the neoliberal economic development of health care internationally. Drawing on theory from critical medical anthropology and health and human rights perspectives, the paper critically analyzes the assumed independence between the medical tourism industry and local populations facing critical health issues, where social, cultural and economic inequities are widening in terms of access, cost and quality of health care. Finally, medical tourism is examined in the local context of India, critiquing the increasingly indistinct roles played by government and private sectors, whilst linking these shifts to global market forces.     

Memory Pieces and Footprints: Multivocality and the Meanings of Ancient Times and Ancestral Places among the Zuni and Hopi

The notion of the "contested past" has grown to be an important topic in anthropological research in recent decades, linking such themes as nationalism, identity, museology, tourism, and war. In North America, these discussions have largely centered on archaeology's shifting relationship with native peoples. As scholars give new attention to how research methodologies and representation of cultural histories affect indigenous peoples, it is critical to understand the unique ways in which Native Americans view their past. Contemporary Zuni and Hopi interpretations of ancestral landscapes in the San Pedro Valley of Arizona are used to explore how indigenous worldviews imbue ancient places with deep cultural and individual meanings. This research, based on a three-year collaborative ethnohistory project, argues for resolution to the "contested past" by incorporating a perspective of multivocality, which will enable the creation of alternative histories that do not eschew scientific principles while respecting native values of history.     

The last African white giraffes live in farmers’ fields

The giraffe population (Giraffa camelopardalis) in Niger is the last representative of the peralta sub-species which lived throughout West Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Protected since the 1970s, giraffes cohabit with humans in cultivated landscapes. This may not have appeared to pose many problems in the past, but the relationship between farmers and giraffes has deteriorated with the expansion of cultivated land and that of the giraffe population, with reported cases of giraffes damaging crops. A survey was conducted in all the affected villages in the Kouré area to establish the nature, severity and distribution of the damage and to evaluate the local populations’ perception of the problem. Cowpeas are fed upon in the field at harvest time and in the granaries, as well as ripe mangoes, during the most critical period for giraffes’ nutrition. The vast majority of farmers interviewed consider giraffes to be rather a problem in spite of tourism revenues they can obtain from them. This opinion has individually little correlation with damage rate on crops or easy access to tourism revenues. The damage risk factors are first and foremost considered as uncontrollable by the farmers, even if technical protection measures could easily be put in place locally. The inter-relationships between the socio-economic context and the way the problem is perceived are discussed.     

Wildlife Abundance and Diversity as Indicators of Tourism Potential in Northern Botswana

Wildlife tourism can provide economic incentives for conservation. Due to the abundance of wildlife and the presence of charismatic species some areas are better suited to wildlife tourism. Our first objective was to develop criteria based on wildlife abundance and diversity to evaluate tourism potential in the Northern Conservation Zone of Botswana. Secondly we wanted to quantify and compare tourism experiences in areas with high and low tourism potential. We used aerial survey data to estimate wildlife biomass and diversity to determine tourism potential, while data from ground surveys quantified the tourist experience. Areas used for High Paying Low Volume tourism had significantly higher mean wildlife biomass and wildlife diversity than the areas avoided for this type of tourism. Only 22% of the Northern Conservation Zone has intermediate to high tourism potential. The areas with high tourism potential, as determined from the aerial survey data, provided tourists with significantly better wildlife sightings (ground surveys) than the low tourism potential areas. Even Low Paying tourism may not be economically viable in concessions that lack areas with intermediate to high tourism potential. The largest part of the Northern Conservation Zone has low tourism potential, but low tourism potential is not equal to low conservation value. Alternative conservation strategies should be developed to complement the economic incentive provided by wildlife-based tourism in Botswana.     

The influence of environment and energy macro surroundings on the development of tourism in the 21st century

Trying to anticipate the future of tourism may be a particularly fraught task. However, this does not mean that trying to predict the future of tourism is not without value. From a business perspective, examining the future enables firms to anticipate new business conditions and develop new strategies. From a destination perspective, reflections on the future enable consideration of how to maintain or improve the qualities of a destination. The paper is focused on an analysis of the impacts of the energy and ecological macro environments on tourism trends in 21st century. Mass international tourism has thrived on the abundant and cheap supply of energy, and this may be about to change as the world moves towards 'Peak Oil'. The resultant scarcity and high price of all energy fuels will produce changes in human activities, specifically in tourism. The basis of the health of the economy is the health of the environment. Therefore issues of global environmental changes are increasingly influencing consideration of trends in tourism. In this looming transitional era tourism needs to make some dramatic changes to harmonize with the new realities of a post-energy world affected additionaly by global warming and other environmental changes.     

旅游干扰对土壤生态系统的影响研究进展

为了解旅游对土壤生态环境的影响,综述了近40年来有关旅游干扰对土壤环境因子、植物、土壤动物和土壤微生物影响的研究进展。旅游干扰致使土壤紧实度、容重、pH、重金属含量升高,氮(N)、磷(P)、水分、有机质含量降低;旅游干扰导致地表植物的高度、盖度、多样性、丰富度、均匀度下降,伴人种植物增多;游客活动区土壤动物的种类、数量、密度均小于缓冲区和背景区,土壤线虫、节肢动物对旅游干扰比较敏感;旅游干扰使土壤酶活性、微生物丰度与多样性显著下降。旅游干扰对土壤生态系统的上述影响与游道、步道等游客活动中心地带的距离呈负相关。将来可构建旅游地生态数据库,从个体、细胞、分子等微观水平深入探讨旅游干扰对土壤生态系统的胁迫机理,发展旅游与环境的和谐共生关系,实现旅游业的可持续发展。     

Have natural disasters created opportunities to initiate Big Cat Tourism in South America?

Livestock is the predominant biomass in terrestrial systems around the world, and conflict with livestock inventories continues to threaten large carnivore persistence in increasingly fragmented habitats. Nevertheless, social tolerance for large carnivores is increasing, as is interest in predator tourism, which can facilitate wildlife–livestock coexistence strategies. We report two case studies in which natural disasters led to a reduction in local livestock inventories, and subsequent economic hardships that in turn created opportunities for initiating predator tourism: jaguar tourism in the Pantanal of Brazil and puma tourism in the Patagonia steppe grasslands of southern Chile. Any time livestock numbers are reduced, whether through management decisions or natural disasters, may be considered opportunities to reduce dependency upon livestock and to weigh diversifying revenue streams via alternative activities, such as tourism. Livestock reductions in combination with a surge in the global demand for wildlife tourism have made jaguar and puma tourism an increasingly important economic activity for both regions. Well-managed predator tourism can be effective carnivore conservation, and if integrated among other strategies, can augment conservation agendas.     

Drivers and socioeconomic impacts of tourism participation in protected areas

Nature-based tourism has the potential to enhance global biodiversity conservation by providing alternative livelihood strategies for local people, which may alleviate poverty in and around protected areas. Despite the popularity of the concept of nature-based tourism as an integrated conservation and development tool, empirical research on its actual socioeconomic benefits, on the distributional pattern of these benefits, and on its direct driving factors is lacking, because relevant long-term data are rarely available. In a multi-year study in Wolong Nature Reserve, China, we followed a representative sample of 220 local households from 1999 to 2007 to investigate the diverse benefits that these households received from recent development of nature-based tourism in the area. Within eight years, the number of households directly participating in tourism activities increased from nine to sixty. In addition, about two-thirds of the other households received indirect financial benefits from tourism. We constructed an empirical household economic model to identify the factors that led to household-level participation in tourism. The results reveal the effects of local households' livelihood assets (i.e., financial, human, natural, physical, and social capitals) on the likelihood to participate directly in tourism. In general, households with greater financial (e.g., income), physical (e.g., access to key tourism sites), human (e.g., education), and social (e.g., kinship with local government officials) capitals and less natural capital (e.g., cropland) were more likely to participate in tourism activities. We found that residents in households participating in tourism tended to perceive more non-financial benefits in addition to more negative environmental impacts of tourism compared with households not participating in tourism. These findings suggest that socioeconomic impact analysis and change monitoring should be included in nature-based tourism management systems for long-term sustainability of protected areas.     

基于替代式自下而上法的区域旅游交通碳排放测度

区域旅游交通碳排放测度是分解旅游业减碳任务的一个难题。在剖析替代式自下而上法机理的基础上,以长三角为例,依托归纳法和变异系数法,尝试从人均GDP、人均消费水平和人均运输线路长度三方面测算出游距离,采取以实地调研数据为主、辅之以Mus TT模型法拟定各旅游交通方式的距离比例,立足区情确定碳排放系数,并以区域输入和输出的双向旅游流的人次比值法则对替代结果进行还原调整。研究表明:(1)2011年,长三角旅游交通碳排放总量为8.32 Mt,其中江苏省、浙江省和上海市分别为3.23、2.98 Mt和2.11 Mt;(2)飞机和自驾车共占排放量的71.64%,较明显低于世界平均比例,二者是降低旅游交通碳排放的关键;旅游公共交通的碳排放比例具有远高于发达国家甚至全球平均水平的"中国式"烙印;由高碳排放系数的旅游交通方式向低碳排放系数甚至零碳排放系数的转变,是旅游交通减排的基本方向。     

Epidemiology of Invasive Fungal Infections in Latin America

The pathogenic role of invasive fungal infections (IFIs) has increased during the past two decades in Latin America and worldwide, and the number of patients at risk has risen dramatically. Working habits and leisure activities have also been a focus of attention by public health officials, as endemic mycoses have provoked a number of outbreaks. An extensive search of medical literature from Latin America suggests that the incidence of IFIs from both endemic and opportunistic fungi has increased. The increase in endemic mycoses is probably related to population changes (migration, tourism, and increased population growth), whereas the increase in opportunistic mycoses may be associated with the greater number of people at risk. In both cases, the early and appropriate use of diagnostic procedures has improved diagnosis and outcome.     

The economic benefits of malaria elimination: do they include increases in tourism?

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Policy makers have speculated that one of the economic benefits of malaria elimination includes increases in foreign direct investment, particularly tourism. METHODS: The study examines the empirical relationship between the demand for travel and malaria cases in two countries with large tourism industries around the time in which they carried out malaria-elimination campaigns. In Mauritius, this analysis examines historical yearly tourist arrivals and malaria cases from 1978-1999, accounting for the background secular trend of increasing international travel. In Dominican Republic, a country embarking upon malaria elimination, it employs a time-series analyses of the monthly, international, tourist arrivals from 1998-2010 to determine whether the timing of significant deviations in tourist arrivals coincides with malaria outbreaks. RESULTS: While naive relationships exist in both cases, the results show that the relationships between tourist arrival and malaria cases are relatively weak and statistically insignificant once secular confounders are accounted for. CONCLUSIONS: This suggests that any economic benefits from tourism that may be derived from actively pursuing elimination in countries that may have high tourism potential are likely to be small when measured at a national level. Rather, tourism benefits are likely to be experienced with greater impact in more concentrated tourist areas within countries, and future studies should seek to assess this relationship at a regional or local level.     

普陀山岛旅游生态安全发展趋势预测

科学地预测海岛目的地旅游生态安全发展趋势,对促进海岛旅游经济和生态环境协调发展具有重要的理论意义和实践价值。基于可持续发展的视角,建立了由承载力-支持力-吸引力-延续力和发展力(CSAED模型)子系统构成的普陀山旅游生态安全指标体系,并在灰色系统GM(1,1)模型和RBF神经网络模型比较选优的基础上,对普陀山岛旅游生态安全发展趋势进行了预测。研究结果表明:(1)和灰色系统GM(1,1)模型相比,RBF神经网络模型的Pearson相关系数和误差均方根值更优,可更精确地拟合普陀山岛旅游生态安全发展趋势;(2)2015—2020年,普陀山岛旅游生态安全指数的RBF神经网络模型预测结果由0.7017增加至0.8135,安全等级由比较安全上升至非常安全。研究结果可为维护普陀山岛旅游生态安全提供决策依据。     

旅游地道路生态持续性评价——以云南省玉龙县为例

从生态效应与连通功能两个角度,综合运用景观格局指数、总体变异系数、稳定性系数等方法,以云南省玉龙县为例,构建旅游地道路生态持续性评价体系,定量评价全县主要旅游道路生态持续性状态及其空间分异。结果表明,研究区道路的生态持续性状态总体良好,有助于旅游业发展,同时对生态系统影响有限;受承载游客规模不同、沿线生态系统敏感性差异等因素影响,玉龙县道路的生态持续性具有明显的空间差异;旅游地道路生态持续性的影响因素主要包括道路所承载的旅游活动强度,道路的坡度,道路周边山体的地质构造,道路所经过区域的生态系统敏感程度等。     

Stem cell tourism and future stem cell tourists: policy and ethical implications

Stem cell tourism is a small but growing part of the thriving global medical tourism marketplace. Much stem cell research remains at the experimental stage, with clinical trials still uncommon. However, there are over 700 clinics estimated to be operating in mostly developing countries--from Costa Rica and Argentina to China, India and Russia--that have lured many patients, mostly from industrialized countries, driven by desperation and hope, which in turn continue to fuel the growth of such tourism. While much research has focused on such dimensions as the promotions that allow such businesses to make their services known, media coverage, some patient research, and regulatory conditions for developing country clinics, little attention has been paid to the non-affected members of the general population, the future potential users of such services. This empirical study based on five focus group discussions with a diverse group of healthy adults in a Canadian city, explored participant views of patients who use stem cell tourism services, the likelihood they would avail themselves of such services if they were to suffer similar illnesses, and the conditions under which they might do so, and the impact that admonitions and advice from international expert bodies might have on their decisions. Our findings suggest that these healthy adults are sympathetic to the drivers of hope and desperation, and, despite cautions about research limitations, may seek such treatments themselves under similar conditions. These findings are discussed in the context of the policy and ethical issues raised by this form of medical tourism.