Kaohsiung - Taiwan Case

Ecotourism operation is basically to provide responsible travel for people to natural places without damaging the environment and the future generations could experience and enjoy the aspects with no human intervention. Ecotourism is somehow related to sustainable tourism whereby it minimizes the impact and benefits both the economic and the local people. In addition, preserving the local cultures and not damaging living animals in the surroundings (Weaver, 2008).

Taiwan’s second largest city, Kaohsiung, is an example of both a domestic and international example of eco-city development. There are over 6000 factories that are constructed here in Kaohsiung. This few key issues had led to various impacts of lives and standard of living. The locals living in Kaohsiung suffered from dirty air pollution, their cancer rate was extremely high, rivers pronounced dead which had no living creatures in it. The image of Kaohsiung was only pollution and a not environmental friendly place to go do. However, changes were made and now Kaohsiung has transformed into an eco-friendly and tourist-attractions destinations in a short period of time (Fennell, 1999; Kaohsiung, 2011).

Carbon dioxide emissions leading to air pollutions

Due to the heavily industrialised place in Kaohsiung, the air quality of Kaohsiung is one of Taiwan’s worst. The air is seen to be polluted and grew skies are always visible. The carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted is not only Taiwan’s highest but also the world’s worst per capita CO2.

However, Kaohsiung’s air quality has shown remarkable improvement over the years when measures are brought in and to provide a sustainable environment for the locals and tourists by the government. Apart from that, Kaohsiung was the first Taiwan city that started the trial run of the Environmental Protection Agency’s air pollution control system (Kaohsiung, 2011).

According to Kaohsiung News (2011), “The city government aims to reduce CO2 emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2020, 50% by 2030, and 80% by 2050. In order to achieve the near term CO2 reduction goal by 2020, the government is leaning heavily on clean technology deployment to cover 50% of its target. Other major cuts will come through the residential and commercial sector (15%), industry (12%), and there is still a 10% shortfall yet to be accounted for”.

The urbanization, industrialization of human society plays an important part on the environment and ecotourism is a part of it in the depletion. There are many factors that caused environmental degradation which includes, deforestation, different forms of pollutions and disruption of ecological life. A good example is Kaohsiung’s industry, the amount of air pollutions created has serious impacts on plant and animal species (Buckley, 1994).

Taxes are implemented