CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Govorina, Arina |
|---|---|
| Title | Sustainable Tourism - Disrupted Communications: Present Futures for Lake Baikal's Olkhon Island |
| Summary | Over the past decades, tourism has grown as an industry due to the increasing demand for mobility, leisure, and unique experiences. Recently, tourism has become a subject of much debate, and experts from different fields see the tourism industry as a destructive phenomenon for many destinations. Tourism today is seen as one cause of climate change, biodiversity loss, excessive fossil fuel consumption, a source of disease transmission, cultural commoditization, and other negative consequences. This thesis examines Lake Baikal’s Olkhon Island in Russia, the local tourism industry and its effect on the local environment, culture, and community. The research shows that the island experiences environmental, economic, and cultural problems caused by unsustainable mass tourism. Littering, pollution, habitat destruction, poor or commercial representation of the local culture have become part of life on Olkhon. The mass tourism situation on Olkhon currently results in disrupted communication between tourism stakeholders, on the one hand, and islanders willing to preserve local nature and culture with strong support from activists and volunteers, on the other hand. There is clearly an urgent need for new concepts and initiatives in the local tourism industry that focus on environmental preservation and cultural safeguarding. The thesis puts a set of recommendations for supporting sustainable tourism development on the island, aiming to preserve the local environment, improve the local economy, and safeguard the intangible heritage of the local community. |
| Supervisor | Choyke, Alice Mathea |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/govorina_arina.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University