material offerings, as noted above, which offerings have great potential for causing or adding to already existent environmental pollution (Ruback et al., 2008). For example, many rituals in Hindu pilgrimage involve the sacrificial offerings of money and other material offerings, such as food and floral arrangements, and as pilgrims leave these religious offerings at sacred destinations they become material waste that further compounds the problem (see Shinde, Chapter 3, this volume). These additional waste pressures translate into unhygienic conditions and pose a major challenge for environmental sustainability (Sullivan, 1998; Sofield and Brent, 2001).
Changes in the seasonal nature of religious events have also exacerbated environmental impacts. It used to be that major religious festival occasions drew the largest influx of visitors and therefore the greatest intensity of environmental impact, while in between these major festivals smaller religious celebrations limited to local participation would occur with smaller environmental impacts (Picard and Robinson, 2006). However, not only have the number and frequency of these large religious celebrations and festivals increased (Shinde, 2007a, 2017; Shinde and Pinkney, 2013), in recent years, religious tourists have begun to visit these sacred destinations between the major religious festivals and events. As such, there are more people in these places for longer durations of time, meaning that the religiously-induced environmental problems that would normally be limited in scale and scope to these large religious events continue during the pilgrimage ‘off-season’. This creates a situation where the resilience of religious sites are severely tested, as there is not enough time for the natural and built environment, let alone the host community, to recover from the impacts of major pilgrimage events. Therefore, there is a persistence of negative environmental impacts for longer durations, leading to a lack of ‘seasonality’ that is often inherent in leisure tourism.
While the direct environmental impacts, as the examples above note, are directly related to the presence of visitors, indirect environmental impacts are induced in many ways by the types of development patterns experience within these sites. The most significant environmental change in sacred destinations is urbanization that is driven by pilgrimage and tourism development, within which two processes are evident. The first process is driven by the consumptive needs of pilgrims, religious tourists, and leisure-oriented tourists. The focus on ‘the consumption of pleasure’ in these destinations creates a ‘distinctive ecology, one evoking powerful images of pleasure – and this acts as a lure to [pilgrims and] tourists’ (Mullins, 1991, p. 340). This ‘distinctive ecology’ leads to the rapid growth of tourism infrastructure, including hotel accommodation and transportation systems, to service increased visitor flows (Kaur, 1984; Singh, 2002). Also contributing to this rapid growth are the creation of new commercial establishments and real estate development. As Melwani (2001) notes in the pilgrimage centre of Haridwar-Rishikesh,
Developers have constructed over 200 upscale apartment blocks, and many more are under construction ... Shivalik Ganga Estates in Haridwar uses the tag line: ‘Peace Unlimited. Plots Limited.’ Prices are upward bound − an apartment on the riverfront, which sold for US $25,500 4 years ago, now fetches $53,200. These luxury apartments may cost a bundle, but certainly the path to finding God was never easier!
As a part of this kind of new real estate development, there has been an increase in the purchasing of ‘second homes’ at sacred destinations (Shinde, 2008). The motivation to have a ‘second-home’ or a ‘spiritual retreat’ in ‘god’s abode’ is compelling for devotees who are able and willing to pay a lot of money to own a piece of a sacred landscape (Shinde, 2017). This strong driver of sacred ownership creates a major incentive for the establishment of speculative real estate development.
The second process relates to the inmigration of people looking for work within the pilgrimage/tourism industry. Many of those who come to sacred destinations looking for work are poor migrants from neighbouring rural areas and small towns. Most of these migrants end up living in informal squatter settlements in urban peripheries that have no infrastructure services, which contributes to degradation of these peripheral areas of pilgrimage centres (Dube, 1994; Nagabhushanam, 1997). In addition, the lack of a pilgrimage/tourism off-season also fuels the demand for additional pilgrimage/tourism services and infrastructure, and attractions, leading to the creation of new urban landscapes that affect the resistance and resilience of the natural and human-built environment as well as the necessary physical infrastructure (Shinde, 2017).
These parallel processes lead to ‘rapid population and labour force growth, a “flexible”’ labour market, a [change in traditional] class structure, [and] a different household and residential organization’ (Mullins, 1991, p. 340). As noted above, these processes also lead in many cases to the irreversible transformation of the sociospatial landscape of sacred destinations (Mullins, 1994; Gladstone, 1998), such as placing a higher than normal stress on the existing water supply system, sewage system, roads, and air quality (Varady, 1989; Srikrishna, 1994; Nagabhushanam, 1997; Trivedi and Agrawal, 2003). Thus, within growing sacred destinations, religious and leisure-oriented tourists seem to almost parasitically feed off the sacred core (Shinde, 2017).
Religious Perceptions of Pilgrimage and Religious Tourism Impacts
Many studies have found that visitors are often not concerned about their impacts on the natural or human-built environment in the sacred places they frequent despite being presented with evidence that they contribute to environmental degradation and unhygienic conditions (e.g. Alley, 1994; Sullivan, 1998; Haberman, 2000). Moreover, many of the physical environments within religious tourism destinations often present a stark contrast between the idealized sacral nature of the place and the reality of everyday living (Haberman, 2006). Turnbull (1981, p. 76) notes that in the case of Varanasi, while Hindu pilgrims perceive the city as the most beautiful and hallowed place in India, in reality the city ‘may forever remain merely one of the dirtiest’ for foreign visitors. Although more than three decades old, Turnbull’s observation is still valid, as Varanasi continues to be one of India’s most polluted yet sacred Hindu pilgrim-towns. In this vein, Tanner and Mitchell (2002, p. 125) point out that there is more to understanding the natural and human-built environments of sacred and religious places than through just scientific assessments and the quantification of environmental problems. They note that the power of these sacred places derives from their religious importance, and hence devotees are less inclined to focus on their degraded physical conditions or environment:
Religious experiences which come from arriving in the sacred space are not related to the glories of nature or cultural aesthetics ... Whether at Lourdes or at the Buddhist pilgrimage centre at Katagarama in Sri Lanka, there is little visible at the site to inspire the pilgrim ... The reason must be sought in the mind and heart of individuals rather than in the objective value of places themselves.
People’s perceptions of the environment are often shaped by cultural subjectivity. As Tuan (1974, p. 246) notes, ‘culture can influence perception to a degree that people will see things that do not exist’. To better understand place-based meanings, McDowell (1994, p. 154) suggests that it is necessary to analyse both ‘material practices and symbolic representations’. In this case, the issues and concerns around changes in the ‘religious environment’ can be raised regarding changes in religious and cultural traditions rather than problems related to the physical environment. Such articulation falls in line with McDowell’s (1994, p. 146) observation that ‘symbols, rituals, behaviour and everyday social practices result in a shared set or sets of meanings that are, to great or lesser degrees, place specific’.
For example, many pilgrimage sites are associated with natural features, including rivers, mountaintops, water bodies, and trees (Bhardwaj, 1997). Because these features are a part of a sacred geography defined by religious values and beliefs, in many cases they tend to be viewed from a religious perspective rather than in terms of their ecological functions (Eck, 1982; Gesler and Pierce, 2000, p. 222). Indeed, sacred places, even if they also function as a tourism destination, are not ordinary or secular environments, as they have undergone
