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"Low-impact tourism"
(Turismo Prudente) as a
starting point for a future economic and environmental development of
Liguria’s Maritime Alps.
Over the past ten years a substantial change of awareness has taken place in
the tourism sector. It is now generally recognised that tourism requires
intact environmental foundations (flora, fauna, water, air, etc.). It is
also generally accepted that tourism is capable of destroying its own
foundations.
Surface sealing, destruction of intact environmental structures, water
pollution caused by unpurified wastewater ducts, traffic noise, air
pollution, etc. all belong to the negative effects of tourism.
But the last few years have shown that tourists are less and less ready to
include the consequences of environmental destruction in their holidays.
They avoid the over-exploited resorts and look for “cleaner”,
intact alternatives.
Low-impact tourism helps, by a protective relation with our surroundings, to
preserve creation and to hand down the Earth in a possibly undamaged
condition to our children and grandchildren.
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With this in mind,
Bajardo - Bioliguria uses the historical village structures in the
Ligurian Maritime Alps as a starting point for the development of a
“low-impact tourism”, without substantial
colonisation. This new concept for holiday homes in a rural area takes
existing buildings, if possible a complete “nucleus”, and uses
their original shape and fascination for touristic goals.
This region’s economic history over the last decades has driven to a
relevant migration process of the inhabitant population from these mountain
villages, a depopulation that may be reversed only by environmental and
economic models. Some of these villages have stood completely empty for
years, others are only inhabited by senior citizens or used as summer
lodging for shepherds. But in a tiny part of these villages some foreigners
(Germans, Swiss, Norwegians) have already built holiday homes. The latter is
an important signal that shows how these villages are seen as an attractive
environment for holidays and leisure, and there is no doubt that this demand
will be even more strengthened by Bajardo – Bioliguria’s set goals.
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