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To New York for shopping, to Paris for a romantic dinner on the Eiffel Tower and to the Caribbean in summer for swimming ... In 2018, around 1.4 billion people took a trip abroad. The number of tourists worldwide has increased fiftyfold in the last 70 years - and continues to grow constantly. Yet booming tourism doesn't just have its sunny side. What for many means relaxation and a welcome break from everyday life often has less glamorous effects on nature: Pristine beaches and forests have to make way for ostentatious luxury resorts. Exquisite food and drink is shipped halfway around the world just so that a guest in the Caribbean can be offered French wine for dinner. And, of course, the many tons of CO2 produced by a single scheduled flight to a vacation destination. Let's not kid ourselves: Tourism is a contributor to climate change. Travel, especially air and sea travel as well as travel to and from destinations by car, pollute our environment through their high CO2 emissions. But this is not the only negative impact of tourism on our environment. New infrastructure has to be created for hotels, resorts and tourist attractions, which changes the landscape of the places. Green areas are built up, viewing platforms as well as parking lots are constructed and roads as well as paths are developed to make previously untouched beaches or mountains accessible to travellers. Water scarcity and water pollution (for example through sewage) are also an issue. In many countries and regions, drinking water is already a scarce commodity. If increased water consumption by tourists is added to this, there is even less water left for the local population and agriculture. Some activities, such as snowmaking on ski slopes, also consume valuable water resources. In many places, the treatment of wastewater is not yet advanced enough, so that it is discharged directly into rivers or the sea without being filtered. If the amount of wastewater increases due to the growth in tourism, this leads to a clearly noticeable pollution of local waters. Biodiversity is also affected by encroachment on nature as well as air and water pollution, resulting in a decrease in the diversity of flora and fauna. Since it is above all our beautiful nature and exotic plants and animals that make traveling to foreign countries so attractive, it should be especially important to us globetrotters not only to experience our environment, but also to protect it.
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