G.M. Timčák
Technical University Košice, Slovakia
GEOTOURISM - ETHICAL ISSUES
Geotourism is an area of tourist activities that
are mostly linked with geological, geomorphological and nature based features.
Whatever the specific orientation, it tends to bring more people to the natural
environment. In nature, special paths are designed for tourists (pedestrian,
cyclotourists or other) to show the beauties, but to minimise the environmental
loading and stress. The problem is that the visitors have to have some scenic
or special experience (e.g. waterfall, cave, rock outcrop, plants, animals),
but how to provide it without intrusion
and interference (physical interference, pollution, noise, litter, etc.)?
Thus for example Geoparks are
one of the specific areas linked to geotourism. As they are usually protected
areas, on -site information about the
inside contents of a geopark is provided through visit trajectories that enable
only viewing (i.e. non-contact experience). This, however does tend to overload
part of the geopark and the adjacent areas.
In protected areas there are legitimate tracks for
pedestrians and/or cyclotourists. But how to prevent both from trespassing? The
experience in Slovakia shows that there is considerable damage due to
illegitimate passages of visitors through protected areas.
This poses serious questions regarding the ethical
conscience of visitors. Evidently
special education and commitment is needed.
In some protected areas a part (usually about 10%)
of the protected area is “sacrified” to visitors, so that some funds are raised
for maintenance and research. In other areas
multimedial information centres
are built at the edges of the
protected areas in order to inform, entertain, but to keep off visitors. Is
this the way?
All these are questions pertaining to the area of
sustainable tourism activity design. The paper attempts to forward some
solutions.