The Hydrosocial Cycle in Coastal Tourist Destinations in Alicante, Spain: Increasing Resilience to Drought

Carlos J. Baños, María Hernández, Antonio M. Rico and Jorge Olcina
Additional contact information
Carlos J. Baños: Department of Regional Geographical Analysis and Physical Geography, University of Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain
María Hernández: Interuniversity Institute of Geography, University of Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain
Antonio M. Rico: Interuniversity Institute of Geography, University of Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain
Jorge Olcina: Interuniversity Institute of Geography, University of Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 16, 1-20

Abstract: Tourism, and particularly residential tourism, has led to a change in the urban and demographic model of towns along the European Mediterranean coastline. Water as a resource limited and limiting for the growth of tourism is a popular topic in the scientific literature. However, the incorporation of non-conventional resources (desalination) has meant, in theory, that this limitation has been overcome. The aims of this paper are: (a) to identify the different tourism models existing in coastal towns in Alicante province and characterize them according to their water consumption from 2002–2017; and (b) analyse the hydrosocial cycle, highlighting the measures aimed at satisfying water demand and identifying the limitations related to these hydrosocial systems. To this end, different types of information have been processed, and various basic indicators have been analysed. The results revealed the increase in the resilience of this region to natural aridity and drought events. This was possible because the demand management and the use of desalinated water. However, this has generated other problems associated (energetics, environmental) due to maintenance of a non-sustainable territorial model based on an accelerated real estate development.

Keywords: water consumption; hydrosocial cycle; tourism destination; resilience; non-conventional water resources; sustainable tourism; overtourism; shortage; Spain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/16/4494/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/16/4494/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:16:p:4494-:d:259033

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().