Paradise lost: World's most beautiful places under threat of tourism

It is the double-edged sword of tourism: On the one hand it brings the awareness of beautiful places and and economic development for the local population. On the other, this exposure can lead to uncontrolled numbers of tourists, damaging the beauty they came to see.

As the authorities in Thailand close the island of Koh Tachai because of the toll of heavy tourism, we take a look at some other popular destinations that are at risk of losing their best asset.

Phi Phi Islands, Thailand

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Image captionThe Phi Phi islands are facing coral extinction and other environmental problems brought on by a boom in tourism

Since becoming the backdrop for the Hollywood film The Beach, this tropical paradise has come under increasing pressure as the result of a largely uncontrolled tourism boom.

Koh Phi Phi and nearby islands welcome more than 1.4 million tourists a year, according to the Tourism Council of Thailand.

Coral reefs have been destroyed by boat anchors and scuba divers, and the marine environment has been damaged by pollution from motorboats and the dumping of untreated waste into the sea.

Cozumel Island, Mexico

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Image captionThe paradise island of Cozumel is reported to be the second most popular destination for cruise ships worldwide

Known for its beautiful beaches and tropical reefs, Cozumel island, off the coast of Mexico, was once a peaceful place until docks were built for cruise ships.

Today, it is the second most popular cruise ship destination in the world.

The fragile reefs are threatened by pollution and development, and the ships are causing the waters to get warmer and damage the coral.

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Caribbean cruises

• The wider region gets 63,000 port calls from ships each year
• They generate 82,000 tonnes of rubbish a year.
• The average cruise ship carries 600 crew members and 1,400 passengers.
• Passengers on a cruise ship each account for 3.5kg of rubbish a day, compared with 0.8kg per local inhabitant

Source: Our Planet, UNEP magazine, 1999

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Bali, Indonesia

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Image captionBali's delicate island ecosystem is under threat from continued encroachment

The Indonesian island of Bali is under threat of increased deforestation, as the area makes way for the tourism industry and Indonesia's growing population.

Tourism is growing at an exponential rate, but the infrastructure is not, resulting in mountains of waste that have nowhere to go.

Non-native animals and plants also threaten the island.

Galapagos islands, Ecuador

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Image captionThe unique biodiversity of the Galapagos Islands inspired Charles Darwin to conceive the theory of natural selection

Although it is not quite mass tourism, thousands of tourists flock to the Galapagos Archipelago every year to experience the unique biodiversity and its pristine environment.

But this island habitat is extremely sensitive to outside pressure, not only from too many tourists and the resulting development, but from the invasive species they are bringing with them.

As a consequence, the Galapagos Islands has been put on Unesco's World Heritage list.

Mount Everest

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Image captionNepalese climbers collect 1,800kg of rubbish at an altitude of 8,000m (26,000ft)

Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top of Mount Everest in 1953, tens of thousands of hikers have trekked to base camp and almost 7,000 climbers have made it to the summit.

There was a two-year gap in the stream of climbers after a deadly avalanche in 2014 and another a year later caused by the Nepal earthquake, but this spring the expeditions have started up again.

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The sheer number of people visiting has had a huge impact on this fragile environment.

Climbers take with them things including climbing equipment, food, plastics, tins, aluminium cans, glass, clothes, papers and tents. Some of this is left behind.

But sanitation is the biggest problem - about 11,000 kilo of human excrement is removed every year, which leaves you to imagine how much is left on the mountain.

Evidence of ancient tsunamis on Mars

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Image captionTsunami-borne sediments (arrow) inundate the land in an upslope direction (towards bottom-right)

Scientists think they see evidence of two huge tsunamis having once swept across the surface of Mars.

They point to satellite data suggesting a major redistribution of sediments over a large region at the edge of the Red Planet's northern lowlands.

The US-led team argues that asteroid or comet strikes into an ocean of water could have triggered the giant waves.

Such events could only have occurred more than three billion years ago when the planet was wetter and warmer.

Today, Mars is dry and very cold, and any impact would merely dig out a dusty hole.

But researchers have long speculated that the low, flat terrain in Mars' northern hemisphere could have hosted an ocean if the climate conditions were just right.

The nagging doubt with this theory has been the absence of an identifiable shoreline - something the new study could now help explain.

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Left: A colour-coded digital elevation model of the study area showing the two proposed shoreline levels of an early Mars ocean that existed approximately 3.4 billion years ago. Right: Areas covered by the documented tsunami events extending from these shorelines.

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If tsunamis regularly inundated the "land", dumping sediments and scouring new flow channels, they could over time have disguised what otherwise would have been an obvious "coast".

"Clearly, it's one of the implications of this work: to have tsunamis, you must have an ocean," said Alexis Palmero Rodriguez from the Planetary Science Institute in Tuscon, Arizona.

"So, we think this is going to remove a lot of the uncertainty that surrounds the ocean hypothesis. Features that have in the past been interpreted as relating to an ocean have been controversial; they can be explained by several, alternative processes. But the features we are describing - such as up-slope flows including large boulders - can only be explained in terms of tsunami waves," he told BBC News.

Dr Rodriguez and colleagues' tsunami findings appeared on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. Their work centres on two connected regions of Mars, known as Chryse Planitia and Arabia Terra.

The team claims that the sediments observed by satellite betray the action of two ancient mega-tsunamis.

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Image captionDid early Mars have a vast northern ocean?

The older event is perhaps easier to understand in an Earth context, where energetic waves can pick up sediments, including massive boulders, and dump them at a higher elevation. The water, as it turns back to run downhill, then cuts new channels - such as the ones identified on Mars by Dr Rodriguez's group.

But the scientists go on to describe the traces of a second, younger event. This is calculated to have occurred a few million years later, when the climate had cooled significantly. In this instance, the tsunami wave likely froze as it propagated across the land surface. This is suggested by the observation of "lobes" of sediment without the backwash channels.

On Earth, the frozen floes capping a sea or a lake can sometimes be pushed ashore by a storm surge. It is an unusual phenomenon but would be analogous to what is being suggested - albeit on a much larger scale - for Mars.

The team has estimated the energetics of the impacts and their ensuing tsunamis, based on the scale of the sediment distributions.

The craters that were produced were probably about 30km across, they say. The waves could have been 50m in height, or even 120m at some locations.

The areas affected by the tsunamis cover some 800,000 sq km for the older event and 1,000,000 sq km for the younger one.

"On Earth, the K-T boundary impact (that wiped out the dinosaurs) produced an enormous tsunami wave that hit the continental United States, equivalent to the area we see flooded in our study region on Mars," Dr Rodriguez added.

Wet Red Planet?

Having lost some currency, the idea of an ocean on Mars is gaining popularity again.

Investigations by Nasa's Curiosity rover at Gale Crater have revealed that the deep bowl likely contained persistent lakes in the past.

Such water, it is argued, could only have been maintained if there was a robust hydrological system on Mars, cycling moisture between a large sea somewhere on the planet, its atmosphere and its land surface.

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A view (right) of a boulder-rich surface (yellow bars are 10m) deposited by the older tsunami, and then eroded (left) by channels produced as the tsunami water returned to the ocean elevation level

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"[The] large expanse of currently documented tsunami inundation is but a portion of what occurred along the margin of the Martian northern plains-filling ocean," said co-author Kenneth Tanaka of the US Geological Survey.

"Tsunami-related features along other parts of the ocean margin, and potentially other smaller former bodies of water, remain to be identified, mapped and studied in detail."

Peter Grindrod from University College London was not involved in the study. He commented: "The idea of a northern ocean on Mars has been floating around for decades. But the evidence hasn't been able to push this idea forward as the consensus view.

"However, this possible evidence of tsunami deposits is interesting and, along with other recent studies of widespread deltas, could perhaps mark the beginning of a reinvigoration of the ocean hypothesis."

The lobe deposits from the younger event would be an excellent location for future exploration by surface robots or astronauts, the team believes. They are relatively undisturbed and so probably retain important information about the nature of the ocean, and possibly even some bio-signatures if the body of water happened to support life.

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This satellite image taken using a thermal (temperature) sensor shows ice-rich lobes thought to be the remnants of tsunami waves that transitioned into slurry ice-rich flows as they propagated under extremely cold climatic conditions. The up-slope direction of flow is indicated by the white arrows. The lobe length is about 250km.

(Source: BBC)

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India rejects Pakistan concerns over Kashmir map

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Image captionKashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan in its entirety but has been divided since 1948

India has rejected Pakistan's concerns over a proposed law to ban maps or satellite images of the country unless they are approved by the government.

Pakistan has criticised the "incorrect" depiction of the disputed region of Kashmir in Indian maps.

The maps show all of Kashmir as being part of India, and not divided between Pakistan, India and China.

Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan in its entirety but has been divided since 1948.

It has been the cause of two wars between them.

In a letter to the UN, Pakistan has raised "serious concern" over the "controversial" bill.

"In violation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, the official map of India has been depicting the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir as part of India which is factually incorrect and legally untenable," a statement issued by Pakistan's foreign ministry said.

"Through the passage of this bill, the Indian government would penalise the individuals and organisations who depict Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory as per the UNSC resolutions."

India's foreign ministry spokesperson said the proposed bill "is an entirely internal legislative matter of India, since the whole state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India".

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Image captionThe bill would require a licence for all existing photographs and maps.

Vikas Swarup said "Pakistan or any other party has no locus standi in the matter".

"The government firmly rejects Pakistan's repeated and increasing attempts to impose the international community matters that India has always been open to address bilaterally with Pakistan," he said.

The proposed Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, which would affect digital maps from Google, Apple, and Uber, is facing stiff opposition from campaign groups in India.

It also bans "wrong" information, including disputed international borders.

The government said the rules would not create barriers to business if the bill became law.

The bill bans all types of geospatial information, maps, raw data or photographs, acquired by any means, including satellite photography. Offenders could be fined up to 1bn rupees (£10.4m).

It also requires anyone who has already gathered such information to apply for a licence to keep it.

Critics say the definition of geospatial data is so wide it could include printed maps, world atlases, or depictions of the country in international magazines imported to India.

India's Narendra Modi woos Iranian leaders

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Image captionPrime Minister Modi (R) hopes for a constructive dialogue with President Rouhani

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in Tehran this weekend, he will find out whether it's the beginning of a new era in bilateral ties - or a missed opportunity.

Delhi's relations with Tehran are multi-faceted and complex. The two countries share centuries-old cultural and linguistic links. In modern times, the relationship is more economic and strategic.

Tehran was the second biggest supplier of crude oil to India until 2011-12. Iran is also strategically located in the Gulf, and it offers an alternative trade route to Afghanistan and to Central Asia.

India is home to the world's second highest Shia population, next only to Iran. Iran's influence over an estimated 45 million Shias in India is regarded as significant. With Iran emerging after international sanctions, it offers great investment opportunities to Indian companies.

But the bilateral ties suffered setbacks following international sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear programme. As successive Indian governments moved closer to the US, their Iran policy took a back seat, much to the displeasure of the Iranians.

Iranians were dismayed when India voted against their country at a vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2009. Then India significantly reduced oil imports from Tehran following US pressure.

"That was a bitter lesson for the Iranians. They understood that India would not take Iran's side on any dispute and India would not sacrifice its relations with the US and the West for Iran," says Fatemeh Aman, an Iran-South Asia affairs analyst based in the US.

During his first two years at office, Mr Modi focused more on India's immediate neighbourhood and Indian Ocean rim countries. Relations with the United States and the west were given a priority.

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Image captionInida hopes investment in Chabahar port will provide it with a gateway to Afghanistan

"There is very clear sense in India that he has to engage more with Muslim countries in the region, in the extended neighbourhood. Mr Modi has already been to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and planning to visit Qatar.

"The visit to Iran comes as part of the strategy," says Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow for South Asia at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.

When the international sanctions were in place, India could not pay for the oil it had imported from Iran. It still owes $6.5bn in unpaid dues and Delhi is still finding a way to facilitate the payment.

Western banks are still reluctant to do business with Iran when some of the US sanctions are still in place.

India is aware that China is making inroads into Iran to rebuild the economy devastated by the sanctions. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, visited Iran in January this year to firm up business ties. Beijing is already Iran's largest trading partner.

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Much travelled Modi:

• As of May 2016, Prime Minister Modi has made 40 foreign trips on five continents since his election in 2014
• State visits in 2015: Seychelles, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, France, Germany, Canada, China, Mongolia, South Korea, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, UAE, Ireland, UK, Singapore, Russia, Afghanistan
• State visits in 2016: Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Iran, US (to come).

Profile: Narendra Modi

With the security situation in Afghanistan deteriorating, India is also looking to find various ways to maintain its foothold in the war-torn nation to counter Pakistani influence. With the land route to Afghanistan through Pakistan unavailable, it's looking at Iran to trade with Afghanistan.

India is investing more than $150m to develop Chabahar port in south-eastern Iran. It hopes the port will give a transit route to Afghanistan.

In the future, it also wants to bring gas from Central Asia and then transport it to India. The project will also give sea access to Afghanistan.

"From India's perspective, Chabahar port is a gateway to Afghanistan. From Chabahar there is a road which goes all the way to Afghanistan and it will link up with a road which India has already built inside Afghanistan. In a way, India is ensuring that there could be no exit strategy from Afghanistan," says Mr Roy-Chaudhury.

Mr Modi plans to visit Kabul in June and he is expected to sign a trilateral trade agreement with Iran and Afghanistan for Chabahar port.

During his meeting with the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, Mr Modi would want to assure that India is keen to establish deeper and long-standing ties.

But Iranians may be a bit wary given their past experience.

India records its hottest day ever

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Image captionThe weather office has issued several warnings of "severe heat wave" conditions in recent days

A city in India's Rajasthan state has broken the country's temperature records after registering 51C, the highest since records began, the weather office says.

The new record in Phalodi in the desert state comes amid a heatwave across India.

The previous record for the hottest temperature stood at 50.6C in 1956.

The heatwave has hit much of northern India, where temperatures have exceeded 40C for weeks.

The run-up to the Indian monsoon season is always characterised by weeks of strong sunshine and increasing heat but life-threatening temperature levels topping 50C are unusual.

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Murari Lal Thanvi, an eyewitness in Phalodi, told the BBC he had struggled to stay outdoors on Friday.

"Even my mobile phone gave up and stopped working when I was trying to take pictures today," he said.

"I was able to switch my mobile phone on after putting a wet cloth on it for about 20-25 minutes."

India Heatwave

51C

Temperature recorded on Thursday in Phalodi, Rajasthan

• 50.6C Previous record for the hottest temperature in India, 1956
• 45C Temperature at which India declares a heatwave
• 56.7C Hottest temperature ever recorded (Death Valley, US, 1913)

Source: ASU

The weather office has issued warnings of "severe heat wave" conditions across large parts of India's northern and western states through the weekend.

India declares a heatwave when the maximum temperature hits 45C, or five degrees higher than the average for the area in previous years.

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Image captionThe searing heat in Phalodi did not stop this sweet shop maker from plying his trade

This summer, the heatwave has claimed dozens of lives in the south Indian states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Permanent relief from the heat is only expected with the arrival of the monsoon, which normally comes in mid-June.