Development of a Tourism Carrying Capacity Index (TCCI) for sustainable management of coastal areas in Mediterranean islands – Case study Naxos, Greece

Abstract

Mediterranean Region is nowadays deemed to be a ‘hot spot’ in various respects, including climate change, environment and biodiversity, urbanization and mass tourism, to name a few. This holds true in the case of Mediterranean islands in particular, i.e. places that are globally acknowledged as appealing mass tourism destinations; while at the same time are confronted with severe threats, more intensely presented in islands' overcrowded coastal zones. In fact, intensified Climate Change incidents and related threats, coupled with the escalating – beyond carrying capacity limits – coastal urbanization and mass tourism development, represent currently key policy concerns in Mediterranean islands. These also raise, in a strict and urgent way, the necessity to sketch more sustainable and resilient future pathways, especially in their coastal counterparts. Towards this end, this paper attempts to outline the Tourism Carrying Capacity (TCC) approach as a means for assessing and steadily monitoring tourism development trajectory in coastal areas of the Mediterranean islands. More particularly, by using the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) framework as a foundation, it develops and implements a Tourism Carrying Capacity Index (TCCI) that focuses primarily on environmental and manmade dimensions; incorporates mostly tourism-specific variables; and is capable of providing guidance towards planning more sustainable tourism future pathways in coastal areas. TCCI application, demonstrated for the Island of Naxos, Greece, unveils its power as an easy to handle decision-making tool for serving coastal tourism sustainability assessment and monitoring; but also its replicability potential and barriers to implementation.