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Puerto Vallarta, Mexico's main economic activity is tourism with significant political, social and environmental repercussions. An analysis of the development of the tourism industry in the region is discussed. Other details of the study are presented.

Canadian geographer Bryan Massam discusses the relationship between civil service and geographical availability of goods to be provided for the well-being of the public. The need to maintain public services for the common good against the increase of corporatism and individualism in modern market economies is also discussed; the town of Fields, British Columbia is given as an example of community planning.

The discussion about nonsustainable ecological systems is in vogue. The debate has led to the biophysical analysis of "human-nature" relationships. This analysis is an important way to determine human impacts on the Earth, based on the colonization of nature and social activities that consider matter and energy flows through appropriation, transformation, distribution, consumption, and excretion. Tourism has appropriated and characterized various types of ecosystems that represent the use of a finite set of spatially distributed resources. The observation of marine mammals, such as whales, in natural protected areas attracts many tourists each year, and this activity indirectly generates carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere. This carbon emission, which is accompanied by the increased scale of tourism, may hamper global conservation goals. We describe the use of the Ecological Footprint tool as a sustainability indicator of humpback whale-watching activity in Bahía de Banderas, Marietas Islands National Park, in Nayarit, México, to examine the global impact of this tourist activity on ecosystems. Calculations are based on the Ecological Footprint method using the consumption/productivity ratio--converting costs of goods and services into consumption of resource inputs and then translating these to surface units. The findings show that the mean whale-watching footprint in the study area is 46.85 ha. This figure is low when compared to other estimated footprints of ecotourism activities in the world. The discussion examines how the results of this type of analysis can be used to improve tourism planning with a view to promoting sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]