2. Current socio-technical system

Texel is a small island in the Dutch Waddenzee, where each year in summer every second person on a island is a tourist. This puts a lot of strain onto the natural resources of the island. The local people, or Texelaars, live quite an environmentally friendly life. They are used to the limited resources and are very proud of the beautiful nature on the island, so they do quite a lot to sustain the environment.

Presence of tourists on the island however, means that they needed more resources from the 'overkant'(mainland): the other side of the Waddenzee. They needed to import fresh water and food in order to satisfy the needs of the island population.

However, the tourist sector now makes up about 80% of Texels income.

This situation challenges the people on Texel and involves economic, ecological and socio-cultural challenges.

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2.1 General Data

The average age of the Texel tourist was in 2010 42.1 years old. One third of these people were Germans, around two third were Dutch, a big part of them (47%) had a higher education in 2013. Their main interests are actively enjoying nature, beach eating and drinking, 72 % find the boat trip an important island holiday feeling. People on holidays on Texel mostly come in small groups, in 2010 the…
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2.2 Actors of the socio-technical system

In the subsystem of Texel as Host, there are several important actors. Actors are the groups of people involved in the system. On the island there are four kind of actors: inhabitants, guests, tourists and visitors. T he inhabitants - defined as a person or animal that lives in or occupies a place. Guests - people staying at a certain place because they were invited there. It is possible that…
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2.3 Acivities and Facilities

Fig.1 Main cities and tourist attraction points Texel position itself as a touristic place. A lot of activities are offered for people coming to the island, such as: Cycling : there is bicycle hire in most of Texel villages, so it is possible to explore island in a sustainable way. The Texel Tourist Office has different theme cycling routes, like, for example, a lamb cycle route: a 35km long…
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2.4 Present sustainable initiatives

Some of sustainable initiatives related to the current sub-system have already being implemented on the island. Food sector One of the examples is that some restaurants on the island make use of ingredients grown on the island as much and often as possible. Those ingredients come from some interesting ecological local initiatives like dairy products and vegetables from Farm the Novalishoeve .
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2.5. Tensions in current sub-system

Impact on other sub-systems On one hand, tourism has positive impact on the economy of Texel Island. According to the data from the report about Tourism, recreation and free time, the Texel municipality and the TESO boat, the total amount of money that tourists spent on the island in 2014 reaches 275 million euro. Moreover, another positive impact of tourism on the island is that it creates more…
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2.6 YUTPA Analysis

Making a YUTPA analysis we considered the importance of all aspects for both tourists and texelaars in terms of our sub-system “Texel as host”. The YUTPA analysis shows with the values we gave the different sub systems how important the Texelaars/tourists find the specific topic. We did the analysis twice. Once for the tourists and once for the Texelaars. The analysis is devided into four…

Part of

2. Current socio-technical system

2.1 General Data

2.2 Actors of the socio-technical system

2.3 Acivities and Facilities

2.4 Present sustainable initiatives

2.5. Tensions in current sub-system

2.6 YUTPA Analysis