On touristic ecological footprint of Macau

Abstract

Despite its tiny territory, Macau boasts a large volume of tourist activities, which serves as the pillar of its economy. Environment and natural resources are the cornerstone of tourism, but are also subject to the negative impact of tourism. Based on the theory and methodology of ecological footprint analysis, this paper calculated the touristic ecological footprint and deficit of Macau in 2009, in an effort to bring to light the current status of excessive consumption of resources by tourism. As the findings show, the non-transferable touristic ecological footprint and touristic ecological deficit of Macau in 2009 are respectively 18 300.891 gha and 12 737.584 gha, and the former is 3.29 times as large as the touristic ecological carrying capacity. Touristic ecological footprint of Macau is highly efficient in economic sense but currently tourism is developing in an unsustainable manner, so appropriate initiatives are in need to strike a balance between tourism development and resource conservation and to promote the sustainability of tourism industry of Macau. © 2012 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.