Abstract
Eco-tourism has become increasingly popular in the postmodern era. However, the management of tourism waste remains a major challenge for tourist destinations worldwide. Here, a non-participatory survey was conducted in five famous scenic spots in Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon National Park in Motuo County, Tibet, to characterize the waste composition and the amount of average daily production per capita during sightseeing. In addition, interviews were conducted at 26 restaurants and 32 hotels in Motuo Town (the administrative center of Motuo County), and data on the composition and amount of average daily production per capita of waste generated by tourists during accommodation and meals were obtained. The total amount of tourism waste in Motuo County in 2018 was approximately 172,108.82 kg. Based on the data collected, an emergy analysis was applied to emergy calculations of the pollution and losses generated during two conventional and locally used tourism waste disposal methods. According to China’s emergy to money ratio (EMR) of 2018, the emergy was converted into its monetary value. The theoretical ecological compensation standard for Motuo County was 4,293,568.99 CNY (equivalent to 648,830.20 USD), and the average ticket price for a single tourist was 18.87 CNY (equivalent to 2.85 USD) in the absence of government fiscal transfer payments. These findings should be utilized by local national park authorities to establish a market-oriented ecological compensation mechanism that is capable of alleviating environmental pressure.
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Data Availability
The datasets used in this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- EMas :
-
Emergy loss of tourism waste generated from accommodation and sightseeing activities
- EMa :
-
Emergy loss of accommodation waste
- EMaj :
-
Accommodation waste emergy of the jth component of the waste
- EMs :
-
Emergy loss of sightseeing waste
- EMsj :
-
Sightseeing waste of the jth component of the waste
- EMsp :
-
Emergy loss of soil pollution
- EMwp :
-
Emergy loss of sewage
- EMod :
-
Emergy loss of open dumping
- EMkw :
-
Emergy loss of kitchen waste
- EMct :
-
Emergy of collection and transportation of kitchen waste
- EMlgp :
-
Emergy of pollution caused by greenhouse gases
- EMlwp :
-
Emergy of polluted surface water caused by non-processed leachate
- EMlt :
-
Emergy loss of landfill disposal
- EMt :
-
Total emergy of open dumping and landfill disposal
- M od :
-
Mass of openly dumped waste
- M pj :
-
Mass per capita per night of the jth component of accommodation waste
- M qj :
-
Mass per capita per day of the jth component of sightseeing waste
- M kj :
-
Mass per capita per day of the jth component of kitchen waste
- M kwj :
-
Mass of the jth component of kitchen waste
- M kw :
-
Mass of kitchen waste
- L od :
-
Land area occupied per ton of openly dumped waste
- E l :
-
Average emergy of land pollution
- R a :
-
Average annual precipitation
- R b :
-
Energy conversion rate of sewage
- R c :
-
Collection and transportation cost of waste landfill disposal per ton
- R ei :
-
Energy conversion rate of the component of kitchen waste
- T i :
-
Number of tourists in category i
- D i :
-
Day time of the ith type of tourist visiting Motuo
- N i :
-
Nights spent by tourists in category i
- M CH4 :
-
Mass of methane
- UEVw :
-
Unit emergy value of sewage
- UEVpj :
-
Unit emergy value of the jth component of accommodation waste and sightseeing waste
- UEVkj :
-
Unit emergy value of the jth component of kitchen waste
- UEVs :
-
Transformity of filtrate generated from kitchen waste by landfill
- EMR:
-
Emergy-to-money ratio
- DOC:
-
Content of the degradable organic carbon of kitchen waste
- DOCf :
-
Proportion of decomposable organic carbon
- MCF:
-
Methane oxidation factor
- F :
-
Volume ratio of CH4 in biogas
- ρ s :
-
Filtrate density
- η el :
-
Total ecological environmental loss caused by tourism waste
- P ave :
-
Average ticket price for a single tourist
- T :
-
Total tourist quantity
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Funding
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72003017), the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 19ZDA082), the Social Science Planning Project of Chongqing (No. 2018BS54), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. 2019CDSKXYJG0037 and 2020CDXYJG019).
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Xiu-mei Xu: Conceptualization, formal analysis, writing—original draft. Chao Feng: methodology, project administration, software, supervision, writing—review and editing. Dan Zhen: investigation, data preprocessing, writing—review and editing. Yi-lan Tan: writing—review and editing. Qun Lai: investigation, data preprocessing, writing—review and editing.
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Xu, X., Feng, C., Zhen, D. et al. Evaluation of the environmental costs of tourism based on an emergy analysis of tourism waste disposal: a case study of Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon National Park in Motuo County, Tibet. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 32708–32720 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12829-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12829-6