| dc.description.abstract | The tourism industry, particularly in rural and coastal
areas, is often heavily reliant on thriving ecosystems.
Healthy ecosystems bring a range of benefits, not least
the provision of food, water, and natural beauty for the
visitor and local community alike. However, tourists can
threaten the quality of the local environment, and the
‘burden’ of over-tourism is a growing concern in many
parts of the world (Wood et al., 2019).
The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened concern about
the potential for over-tourism in Cornwall, as increasing
numbers of people have taken their holidays ‘at home’ in
the UK rather than abroad. At the time of writing, summer
2021 looks set to place further pressure on Cornwall’s
local environment.
However, the impacts of the pandemic also present an
opportunity to explore ways of rebuilding the economy
and society, to put nature’s recovery centre-stage.
Funding from Research England’s Strategic Priorities
Fund, administered through the University of Exeter,
allowed partners and researchers to conduct a short
project (running between January and March 2021)
to explore potential policy ideas that could be further
developed in the future. Our task was to identify, evaluate,
and test the acceptance of locally-relevant evidence
based ideas to:
(1) Reduce any negative impact of tourism on nature
in Cornwall; and
(2) Generate understanding, funds, and volunteer time
to protect and restore nature in Cornwall.
Following a review of potential policy innovations,
the partners and additional stakeholders agreed to
focus on the development of nature-based activities,
funding mechanisms, and appropriate organisational
infrastructures to support nature and a sustainable
visitor economy. This report outlines findings from
investigations into these ideas, including recordings
from a workshop, interviews with key stakeholders, and
surveys conducted with nature-based activity providers,
residents and visitors.
Participation in nature-based activities is widely seen
as a core attraction of Cornwall’s visitor economy. Ideas
for their development initially focused on certification
and standards as methods to ensure appropriate visitor
engagement with nature, and to generate revenue
for nature-focused organisations that would provide
the expertise to train activity businesses, in return for
qualified promotion.
Given the diversity of activity provision and practical
difficulty of standards enforcement, the support for such
measures was not universal. However, opportunities
were identified for training hospitality staff to effectively
become front-line marketers for nature-based activities,
and in developing nature recovery projects as a new type
of attraction to which visitor contributions could produce
tangible, shared benefits.
Funding mechanisms to support the protection and
restoration of nature aroused strong opinions in
relation to the recurring topic of a tourism tax. Industry
participants made clear their opposition to such a
measure. Survey respondents, both residents and
visitors, indicated a preference for visitors to contribute
in comparison to locals, although the exact mechanism
was generally unspecified. Best practice local examples
of visitor gifting schemes point towards a solution to suit
all parties, and this approach could be developed on a
wider scale.
Examples of networks at the local, regional, and sectoral
scales were discussed, generating a variety of viewpoints
about the best model for developing and delivering
locally-led nature-based activities and visitor giving.
Institutional support was advocated to encourage
collaborative local endeavours, with the potential to
benefit nature, communities, businesses, and visitors.
Development of the rural visitor economy and the
emergence of technological infrastructure were also
raised as potential routes to mitigate the impact of overtourism and seasonality effects. These approaches have
the potential to be further developed. | en_GB |
