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In a first, Uttarakhand to assess ‘Tourist Carrying Capacity’ in Nainital District | Current Affairs | Vision IAS
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In a first, Uttarakhand to assess ‘Tourist Carrying Capacity’ in Nainital District

Posted 28 Jul 2025

2 min read

The survey aims to formulate a long-term strategy to protect the popular hill towns in the district from increasing pressure due to unregulated tourism, mounting vehicular traffic, population pressure, among others.

  • Previously, in September 2024, National Green Tribunal directed the state government to classify the Nainital district based on carrying capacity and environmental sensitivity.

What is Carrying Capacity?

  • It refers to the maximum threshold of population an area can bear in relation to the available resources.
  • It depends on both biotic (e.g. vegetation, hydrology) and abiotic (e.g. terrain, climate) factors.
  • Two major approaches for assessing Carrying Capacity:
    • Planetary boundaries approach: Applied in the context of environmental crises such as global warming, land degradation, pollution, water stress.
    • Biocapacity Overshoot approach: It is sustainability metric about the demand humans put on the earth systems by consuming total annual productivity of natural systems within a few months every year. e.g., Earth Overshoot Day.
  • Significance of carrying capacity in planning for sustainable development: Carrying capacity assessment based on precautionary principles (refer infographic) provides the option to practically deal with the tussle between ‘developmental governance’ and ‘sustainability of development’.
  • Tags :
  • Carrying Capacity
  • Earth Overshoot Day
  • Developmental Governance
  • Precautionary Principle
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