ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a critical review of the emerging literature that focuses on the physicality of sacred place and the impacts of visitation on the physical elements of the sacred environment. From the extant literature on the environmental impacts of religious and spiritual tourism, it is possible to discern four themes: differences and commonalities of impacts across different sacrosanct environmental settings; the peculiarities of environmental behaviour in religious tourism that influence impacts on sacred sites; the nature of environmental management in religious tourism; and the distinguishing characteristics of spiritual tourism-environment interactions. Visiting mountains is one of the earliest expressions of pilgrimage and a deliberate way of “becoming closer to the spirits” because pilgrims believed that the gods resided in the mountains. Pilgrimage and religious tourism also damage the natural ecosystem of waterbodies.
