Report suggests overtourism will impact New Zealand's landscape

New Zealand’s fast-growing tourism industry is threatening to ruin its most popular landscapes, with ongoing expansion potentially leading to overcrowding and the loss of unique and tranquil elements of its landscape that attracts visitors in the first place.

New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton has today issued a report warning that domestic and international tourists are putting too much pressure on the country’s environment.

The report, Pristine, popular… imperilled? The environmental consequences of projected tourism growth, examines the role successive governments have played in supporting and regulating the tourism industry, and looks at how the industry, and the environmental pressures it generates, could evolve in the future.

With international visitor numbers to New Zealand approaching four million a year, and having the potential to 10 to 13 million every year by 2050, Parliamentary Commissioner Upton today advised “the sheer numbers of people are eroding the sense of isolation, tranquillity and access to nature that many overseas tourists seek when visiting New Zealand.

“We need to ask, are we in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg?”

The report found that while “tourism is often seen as an environmentally benign form of economic development” this had led to the sector being “shielded from the scrutiny attached to other industries such as agriculture.”

Increasing pressures from tourism have impacted six main areas, the report found: visitor density and loss of natural quiet; water quality degradation; solid waste generation and management; infrastructure development and landscape modification; biodiversity loss and biosecurity risk; and greenhouse gas emissions.

Examples of these pressures have seen huge ‘selfie-queues’ on mountain-tops, crowded roads and tramping huts, and people defecating on the side of roads, lakes or city parks.

Commissioner Upton noted “we didn’t get to where we are overnight.

“The phenomenon of crowded sites, crowded skies and crowded parking lots is the result of more than a century’s worth of promotional taxpayer subsidy”, stating that policies to mitigate the impact had been “insufficient”.

Commissioner Upton cited the worst examples of ‘overtourism’ as occurring at locations such as Mount Cook, the Tongariro crossing and Mount Roy in the southern alps.

He advised that the industry’s growth was vulnerable because of the pressures it imposed on the landscape and environment - land that was quickly losing its sense of peace, and tranquility.

Commenting on the findings, Professor Regina Scheyvens, an expert in development studies at Massey University, said New Zealand had been immune to the problems of overtourism’ seen in Europe but that was no longer the case.

Professor Scheyvens told The Guardian “current government policies of geographical and seasonal dispersal of visitors are a useful step in the right direction. In weighing up priorities, the wellbeing of our environmentally-blessed but economically challenged regions, including Northland and Westland, should be prioritised.

“Using the international visitor conservation and tourism levy to invest in these places, and the people living there, is critical.”

Suggesting that quotas would be needed to control numbers in the country’s most popular spots, Professor Scheyvens also said Māori cultural knowledge should be better utilised by the industry, such as requiring every tourist boat on the Whanganui river - granted legal personhood in 2017 - have a local Māori guide onboard.

Professor Michael Lueck, an expert in tourism at Auckland University of Technology, said the report was “desperately needed” and the demonstrated the need to manage tourism numbers.

He advised “it appears that the main problem is the sheer number of tourists, and we need to look at slowing this growth. The often cited ‘high-value tourism’, or ‘quality over quantity’ does not always work, but it would be fairly easy to, for example, limit the number of cruise ships coming into the country.

“These put a disproportional burden on New Zealand’s infrastructure, environment, and culture, while the economic benefits are comparatively small.”

The report, Pristine, popular… imperilled? The environmental consequences of projected tourism growth, addresses the environmental and cultural impacts of tourism and what ongoing ‘business-as-usual’ growth could mean for the environment and the vulnerability of the tourism sector.

The report finds that, despite a longstanding emphasis on sustainability, the existing policy mix is unlikely to prevent a worsening of tourism’s environmental burden, and that a different approach will be needed to head off that future.

Commissioner Upton has not made recommendations at this stage but is instead planning to gauge feedback on whether this report identifies and understands some of the key challenges, before then potentially following up with a second report.

Click here to view the homepage for the report from the the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment: Pristine,popular…imperilled? The environmental consequences of projected tourism growth (2019).

Images: Tourists at the Tongongariro Crossing (top), the report (middle) and Queenstown, where the Council has considered a tourist levy (below).