Environmental Impacts of Educational Tourism on the City of Famagusta, Northern Cyprus

ABSTRACT: Northern Cyprus has experienced a boom in the number of students selecting island‟s international universities as their future destination for educational purposes. In this regard the Eastern Mediterranean University, as an international university, is the pioneer in hosting about 16000 students from all over the world. The large scale of growth in population has placed some impacts on environment, society, culture and economy of the region. The research seeks to investigate how local environmentalists perceive the consequences of educational tourism development in the city of Famagusta and also the imposed negative and positive impacts of the expansion of this type of tourism on the environment and the local residents‟ lives. In this qualitative research work, the researcher adopts the unstructured interview technique to analyze the environmental impacts of the educational tourism on the host community. A number of 20 Local environmentalists of the city of Famagusta are interviewed and their views and opinions are used as the basis of the researcher‟s analysis from which findings are gotten and recommendations made. Findings of the research gave rise to the fact that overdevelopment of educational tourism in recent years in Famagusta city has placed several negative impacts to the environment as; air pollution, water and land pollution, noise pollution, damage to historical places and beach pollution. Based on the findings of the study it is concluded that although educational tourism development can be used as a tool for destination development specifically in financial aspects, it can also bring negative impacts to the community and environment of the region if not properly planned and organized. Finally some managerial implications and some limitations are also presented by the researcher. Keywords: Educational Tourism, Environmental Impacts, Famagusta, Northern Cyprus. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………