Tourism Minister Paul Lyngdoh has spoken about high end and high value tourism. This is the need of the hour as Meghalaya is increasingly becoming a destination for day tourists from the neighbouring states who spend little but leave behind humungous carbon footprints. The number of vehicles entering Meghalaya per day from Assam has reached alarming proportions. This is no comparison to the number of Meghalaya vehicles bound for Assam other than the goods carrying trucks which in any case move on the highways. Meghalaya needs to learn from countries like Barcelona where the locals have become so fed up of tourists that they have started attacking them. Tour promoters will of course differ on this point. For them the more tourists enter Meghalaya the better the earnings. But has Meghalaya done a study of how many tourists enter the State every day and how many actually spend on hotels and homestays? The numbers would be negligible. In fact, some homestay owners have said that since September-October the number of bookings has come down. Whether that is because there are now more homestays than there are tourists wanting to stay back is another issue. In Sohra, there are homestays galore and the occupancy ratio is poor compared to the hotels which attract high end tourists.
Mass tourism, characterized by high visitor volumes especially in mature destination areas, has resulted in profound environmental degradation. These tourism-centered locations inevitably witness elevated levels of waste output, thereby raising the question of sustainability. Groundwater pollution and plastic littering in some of these areas have resulted in huge ecological footprint. Overcrowding leads to habitat disruption, possible extinction of local flora and fauna since there are tourists that don’t hesitate to pull out orchids from forests. This is likely to result affect the biodiversity of the region. Let’s also not forget that the tourism industry contributes immensely to greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through transportation, which in turn leads to global warming. Meghalaya’s unique selling proposition (USP) is its environment which comprises waterfalls, treks to the double decker living root bridges, caves and the canyons, a climb to the Nokrek peak – a rich biosphere; river rafting, boating on the Umngot among others. Essentially the tour operators of Meghalaya are selling its environment which they do not own. No one owns the environment not even the communities who live around it. That people are making money by selling the environment without thinking of the consequences is highly problematic Unfortunately, any attempt to point this out is seen as an intrusion into the livelihoods of the people who are ‘selling’ the environment and the natural sights and sounds.
Then fact that places beyond the district headquarters have no waste management system to deal with the waste generated by tourists is also a major challenge. The Tourism Department has a huge task before it. So too the tour operators.
