To many tourists and still poor

is overflowing Tenerife When Barbara Bamberger wants to dispel the prejudice, then she grabs a white DIN-A4-sheet. The German tourism expert, came as a child with her parents in Tenerife. The island is their home, she speaks in this soft, flowing Spanish of the Canary Islands, not the hard, gelispelte of most mainland Spaniards. Bamberg is in a Dilemma. The 83 times for 54 km wide island is actually pretty full.

Including you, suffers in everyday life. However, the island lives by tourism, it provides 35 percent of the gross domestic product and approximately 40 percent of all jobs. "And yet, Hotels, Restaurants, or amusement parks cover only three percent of the island," she says, and folds the sheet six Times, until a postage stamp sized space that remains: This part of the entire island claim of the tourism, about three percent. A corresponding surface is covered with cities, villages, streets, industrial parks.

Better not

With the Faltnummer look will convince Bamberg tour operators or journalists that Tenerife is still a lot of space, especially in the summer. "In the Winter we do not necessarily need more visitors," she says. Arguments to the mild, spring-like climate even in the height of summer or the diversity of the landscape. "Nearly half of Tenerife is protected," she says, and unfolds the sheet of paper again, "and a quarter of the island is covered by forest," she says and folds it once more.

Why are you then still have the feeling that the island is on the verge of collapse? Maybe it's because the scurry of a Million inhabitants, and six million tourists every year, especially in the tourism and infrastructure areas. And because you spend a lot of time in the car.

On the way from the Tenerife Norte airport in the tourist resort of Puerto de la Cruz, you can not be the above-mentioned half of nature conservation, the district forest spot. You should try it too.

The traffic and the road network of the North are not so tight that you look better in the landscape. Threading on the three-lane highway, do not miss exit roundabouts, Under - and Overpasses, uphill overcome, downhill, around the 3718-Meter-high Teide. In the Metropolitan area around the capital of Santa Cruz, several hundred thousand people, cities and municipalities to go limitless on each other.

As ants on a bunch of the people on the peaks, volcanic island a day a lot of distance, to work, to University, in the Teide national Park, in one of the recreation areas, the beaches. The a in own the car, the other in the rental car.

What does the island government about it? "Too little," Bamberger, "we need more bus routes and a train," she says. Here every family has at least two cars. Bamberg itself commutes daily between home, school children and office. Her husband works in the South and departs daily hundred kilometres. Traffic jams are part of everyday life of the family, others meet it even worse, says Bamberger. "I have colleagues who need in the morning for a commute of 35 or 40 miles up to one and a half hours."

pay for A limit to the visit but is not in the conversation. No environmental tax, although it is scheduled to go until 2030 in the direction of sustainability. In the tourism white paper "Estrategia Turísticade Tenerife" is the economic pillar of the concept of the speech: Less a beach and Party holidays, more deals for the affluent visitors, more natural, more gastronomy, more stars.

"does the government of The island, nothing against the Overcrowding," says Federico Aguilera Klink, a retired economist at the University of La Laguna, "she has a fear of the tour operators." Tenerife will only step on the brake, he says, when the tourists were dissatisfied. The point seems to be reached: Almost half of the passengers had suspend 2017 at the island of something, among other things, the high traffic density.

Almost half of nothing from the money the tourists

social Tenerife's number one industry is anything but sustainable: 45 percent of the population at risk of poverty; the social redistribution of the money that the tourists bring, it will not work. And you suffer in the flesh under the indirect impact of tourism: The population has increased six-fold in a hundred years.

The economist Dirk Godenau, University of La Laguna, has calculated that only nine percent of the consumed calories from the Islands. The farmers, the waiters, the Land lies fallow and degraded. "Today, Tenerife has the highest land prices in Spain," he says, "and farming for own consumption by the regional government is less subsidized than the cultivation and export of bananas and tomatoes." A visible result of this mix of low-income and majority imported, often processed foods is the high Rate of obese people and diabetics on the Canary Islands. It is the highest in Spain.

In Ecology, sustainability is attacking plan much too short. The ground water level sinks, the waste water is poorly managed cleared to the sea, the waste recycling rate is low and the energy is mostly generated in diesel power plants. Nevertheless, more and more people come.

Encouraging initiatives have only individual entrepreneurs, such as the German hotelier Wolfgang Kiessling, has upgraded its 44-year-old Hotel Botánico ecologically. It works with LED lights, has it's own water circuit with infrared and active oxygen treatment, in the bathrooms Kiessling-saving valves let and rinses to install and on the roof solar modules to install. A heat exchanger directs air from the air conditioner in the Spa. The contractor saves costs and emissions.

tourism head of Alberto Bernabé is less engaged. He feels for environmental issues not have jurisdiction and refers to his colleague, the head of Department José Antonio Valbuena. The place that everything hangs together. "We can't plunder the island of Tenerife in the name of tourism," he says, and adds: "Our main activity is produces enormous quantities of C0?, and not only that, what are we left ourselves ejection, but also to what we import with flying." 72 percent of all emissions of the island.

trees for a better climate

After all, Tenerife in 2015, with the modest project to climate neutrality, "Huella Cero", started, first, in the case of individual projects: an international week of Hiking, press trips, conferences. The participants of the first two editions of the "Walking Festivals" 300 tonnes of greenhouse gas produced. For that 1200 trees were planted in a forest area above the Metropolitan area of Santa Cruz. But you can also try the CO?-To compensate for the balance of six million tourists in such a way? That's a lot of trees would be good. And how many you need for the residents? The island is not too small?

The environmental scientist, Miguel Angel Noriega, who works for the island's government, says that such a compensation is possible. On the one hand, the island was covered in a quarter of the forest, especially pine mono-cultures from the 1970s. The CO?-Capacity is being improved with fresh grounds planted under the wood. In addition, the island is reducing gradually their emissions.

For hikers of 2017 and 2018 would have to be offset 244 tons, Noriega calculated that less leaflets, accommodation for the walkers only in a double room, a transport company from the immediate vicinity of the hotel. Small Steps. And then the energy turnaround, it would be soon anyway, he says.

The Problem is mi sees the E-cars

Also, Manuel Cendagorta-Galarza, head of the innovation and technology Park of Iter in the South, the so. "In ten, 15 years, she has accomplished here," he says. Photovoltaic is now the cheapest source of energy, "and the Canary Islands have a huge potential". Iter is planning a Park for the production of 350 megawatts, would have to be supplemented with solar panels on top of buildings, Cendagorta-Galarza. "With a quarter of the roofs, we cover the entire demand." And the island prepares for electric cars: hundreds of charging options are there already, anyone who buys an electric car, doesn't have to pay VAT. However, the Stromer are the majority of the islanders still too expensive.

Will eliminate the need to plant Trees so at some point? The scientists Noriega and the politicians Valbuena hope not, because the forest strengthens also the floor, collects water and gives Locals and visitors the back, which began to cut down the Spanish conquistadors more than 500 years ago: Laurel and Gagelbäume, buckthorn, Holly, Heather, Ferns and mosses.

On the island of Tenerife, there is now again a bit more, 1200 Gagelbäume, for example. They should grow with the other species to an ever-green, native forest, where the clouds of the trade wind sends over the Islands, could become entangled. And then what makes the Canary Islands in spite of everything so wonderful and unique: ghostly fog forests. (Editorial Tamedia)

Created: 06.01.2019, 20:19 PM