Don't Go There

Tourism has become the stealth industry of the global era. According to the United Nations, the international tourist count in 1960, at the dawn of the modern era of air travel, was 25 million. By 1970, the figure was up to 165 million. Last year, about 898 million people traveled the globe, and the international tourism industry earned $7 trillion. (And those figures don't include people who vacation in their own countries.)

The U.N. World Tourism Organization was established as a special agency five years ago with the twin goals of keeping track of the tourism industry and figuring out how poor countries, in particular, can take advantage of the tourist boom without causing their own ruin. Geoffrey Lipman, the assistant secretary general of the new organization, has spent his life studying the industry. "Tourism," he told me, "is arguably the largest cluster of industrial sectors in the world" and needs to be included in any international discussions about eliminating poverty or protecting the environment. If properly conducted -- maintaining respect for a country's environment and culture, providing local jobs and a market for local goods -- tourism, the United Nations believes, is easily the best way for a poor nation to earn foreign currency.

There are several promising examples of this philosophy at work. The nonprofit British National Trust offers tourist rentals in restored cottages and historic mansions and then uses the money to buy more land and properties to preserve and protect. The African nation of Namibia, meanwhile, has created what it calls "community-based tourism," which manages more than 25 million acres of wildlife preserves, opening much of the land to tourism -- hunting or photo safaris, birding and white-water rafting -- that employs local residents and has dramatically reduced poaching.

Most of the tourism industry, however, is heading in the opposite direction. Tourism is now responsible for 5 percent of the world's pollution, according to a recent study. Cruise ships are one of the biggest culprits. These floating hotels create three times more pollution per passenger mile than airplanes. Years of cruises have helped spoil the water of the Caribbean, which, according to the United Nations, absorbs half the waste dumped in the world's oceans. Now these ships are venturing into already fragile polar waters. Last year, Norway banned all cruise ships from visiting its region of the Arctic Circle.

Beach erosion has been swift. After the South Asian tsunami in 2004, fishermen were told to move their homes away from the beaches, but luxury hotel chains with clout were allowed to rebuild near the water's edge. In the United States, the upswing in violent hurricanes hasn't put a dent in the number of vacation homes being built by the sea. "Essentially every tropical island is in danger," the National Geographic Society's Jonathan Tourtellot told me.

In poorer nations, unregulated tourist developments have put unbearable strains on scant resources, especially water. High-end tourists often waste more water in a day with multiple daily showers and toilet flushes than some local families use in a month.

Then there's the fear that over time, major tourist destinations will become virtual ghost towns. Residents of Venice went on strike last spring to block licenses for more hotels; the city of canals is now so expensive that many locals have been pushed out, helping cut the permanent population nearly in half. This summer, the British government issued a report on rural living that included a serious warning that the rich were buying so many vacation or second homes in the countryside that many local residents couldn't afford to live in their villages anymore.

But of all the ills brought on by mass travel, none is as odious as sex tourism. The once-hidden trade is now open and global, with ever-younger girls and boys being forced into prostitution. The Department of Justice estimates that sex tourism provides from 2 to 14 percent of the gross national incomes of countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The United States has taken a lead in attempts to eliminate sex tourism, but otherwise, it has stayed out of the tourism debate, mostly viewing tourism as a private matter. Now, however, says Isabel Hill, director of the Commerce Department's Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, the questions raised by mass tourism have become too large to ignore. She hopes that the United States, like so many European countries, will "recognize our limitations and how we have to regulate our resources."

Still, there probably won't be a U.S. secretary for tourism and the environment anytime soon. But don't be surprised if the next international agreement on climate change mentions the role of tourism, or if some countries start regulating tourism along with the environment, because the two go hand-in-hand.

In fact, you'd better hope that they do -- if you ever again want to find that cool vacation spot where you can get away from it all.

ehb47@msn.com

Elizabeth Becker, the author of "When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution," studiedmedia coverage of tourismat Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.