River Tourism

In the social context of rivers and human communities, tourism is an activity that is essentially an add-on to the everyday use of this resource. A river’s primary function is to provide water to sustain the urban residential settlement, agricultural, industrial, and transport-related requirements, nevertheless they form the basis of many of the resources that underpin ecotourism and other river basin recreational activities. River tourism in the 21st century is multidimensional; its nature affects the patterns of river use, the significance of the land-water interface, and means now that river zones are delimited according to their tourism use. There is also a need to discuss the role of dams and lakes in river basins in the context of tourism. The approach taken in this chapter is that to contextualize fully the use of rivers by communities now seeking to attract the tourism industry, it is first necessary to understand the range of social and physical factors that govern river functions, and to note that there are other major users of the water they provide. Fresh water is a scarce resource, and in a world where global population numbers continue to rise and where increasing amounts of water are required for food production, electricity generation, and other industrial uses, the recreational uses of fresh water may not rank highly on the list of priorities that must be dealt with. The future use of river basins by communities for leisure and recreation is thus by no means guaranteed, and this complicates river governance and the social construction of their use.

Malcolm Cooper PhD is Emeritus Professor in the Tourism and Hospitality Cluster at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Japan.