Professional paper

TOURISM AND THE PROTECTION OF NATURE AND ENVIRONMENT

Željko Španjol ; Faculty of Forestry, Zagreb

Abstract

As a sociopolitical, economic and sociocultural phenomenon of the modern age, tourism has been recently — much more than ever before — viewed in its relation to the environmental issues. It has been looked for a kind of developmental optimum that would be a kind of balance between protection of nature as tourism's natural resource and modern profit making. Tourism is conscious of the fact that it cannot exist without appropriately protected areas, which have been continuously decreasing. Thus, tourism becomes one of the factors of environmental protection. Tourism is also a unique opportunity for protected areas and other attractive natural resources to be exploited economically.
According to the Croatian Environmental Act ("Narodne novine", 30/1994) there are altogether 746 objects in the Republic of Croatia that are under environmental protection. 332 of them cover an area of 463.262,17 Ha, which makes 7,60% of the territory of the Republic of Croatia. All the environmentally protected areas represent a huge potential for Croatian tourism.
The complementarity between tourism and environmental protection should be reflected in a concept of active protection of nature for tourists' needs, but also of protecting nature from tourists.

Keywords

economic exploitation; environment; protection; tourism

Hrčak ID:

141513

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/141513

Publication date:

15.1.1997.

Article data in other languages: croatian german

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