El Diario reports:
Environmental impacts affect tourist flow
In recent years, the tourist flow to our country has been diminished due to environmental impacts on destinations that were once characteristic of our country and admired worldwide.
Environmental pollution and persistent depletion of natural resources constitute the central problem that should concern society as a whole.
The researcher and professor at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA), Tania Diaz Cuentas in her study “Environmental Management and Tourism” noted that “global pollution is affecting tropical glaciers, as in the case of the once snowed Mount Chacaltaya and Isla del Sol [island of the sun]”.
She also referred to the pollution of Lake Titicaca, especially in the border area with the Republic of Peru.
“In this regard we can not do much more, such as national experts say, to adapt, however, we should continue with the necessary international and national steps to comply with the Kyoto protocols in order to provide protection and conservation to natural resources,” she said.
About the glaciers she said that due to global warming, crossing the Andes of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, they have been reduced by 30 to 50 percent in the past 30 years.
The academic secretary of the Association of Anthropologists of La Paz (ADA), Pedro Pachaguaya said that “the effects of environmental pollution are the product of modernism and industrialization, causing serious imbalances in the environment.”
Meanwhile the director of the Institute of Anthropological and Archaeological Research (IIAA), Claudia Vincenty, said “human action is affecting not only natural sites but also cultural forms; aside of the management of land and territory.”
Bolivian Thoughts 