Study of Environmental Impacts of Tourism in Kashmir Valley and Need for Sustainable Tourism Development

Abstract

The tourism industry has had a significant global upsurge in the last several years and has grown to be an essential component of individual vacation and travel, supporting the growing worldwide economy. Travellers from all over the globe come to Kashmir Valley, sometimes known as "Paradise on Earth," because of its abundance of gorgeous scenery, snow-capped mountains, verdant meadows, and high altitude lakes. Policies now in place from the state government are insufficient to oversee tourism in the area. The purpose of the research was to evaluate how Kashmir Valley tourism affected the ecosystem. The current study attempts to investigate a number of economic development indicators, including visitor influx, job creation, state GDP, infrastructure development, and regional development, in order to comprehend the financial implications of tourism in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Tourists, local community leaders, people from the civil administration, hotels, and tour companies servicing the regions are all included in the research community. To get greater comprehension, 650 questionnaire were given to responders along with a short explanation of the research's significant factors. After confirming the validity and reliability of the instrument, hierarchical regression was used for analysing the data. The review's determinations showed that a critical piece of the populace sees financial benefits, like development, work and business prospects, and improvement of framework coming about because of the travel industry. Nonetheless, it was found that the climate and regular capital was continuously breaking down. Notwithstanding the social climate, abuse of land, attack by different societies, and air and water contamination from gridlocks, strong waste development, wastewater, and ozone depleting substances are completely known to add to social weakness. The research offered an ideal structure for the growth of sustainable ecotourism, together with encouraging government interventions to guarantee efficient preservation of the ecosystem and natural assets without endangering the residents' social and economic well-being. Furthermore, in order to find useful inputs concerning environmentally friendly destination management abroad, the variables and constructions studied may be reproduced to other destinations.