Tourism and sustainable development
7 Tourism and sustainable development
7.5 Conclusion
Chapter 7 Tourism and sustainable development
As discussed in Chapter 2, tourism is at crossroads even in Costa Rica, which is internationally admired and praised as a destination for ‘sustainable’ ecotourism. Although contracts are signed with international consortia to build tourism resorts, there is still no comprehensive supportive policy to strengthen the small and medium-size enterprises or community-based tourism projects.
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Notes
1 ‘The essence of the matter is that one person A, in the course of rendering some service, for which a payment is made, to a second person B, incidentally also renders services or disservices to other persons … of such a sort that payment cannot be extracted from the benefited parties or compensation enforced on behalf of the injured person’ (Pigou , 1962. In: Dubbink, 1999: 92)
2 See Dubbink (1999: 96) for an extensive discussion on the differences and similarities between Pigou and Coase.
3 Although ‘negative’ externalities are often stressed, externalities can also be ‘positive’. For example, recent surveys (Lengkeek and Velden, 2000; Duim et al., 2001 and 2002; Duim and Lengkeek, 2004) clearly show that tourism not only leads to more people, traffic and turmoil on the island (negative externalities), but also to more employment in tourism-related sectors (construction, retail) and thus to more and better quality commercial services on the island.
Moreover, farmers on the island of Texel have for a long time been exposed to the consequences of the joint tourism and nature development on the island, in terms of restrictions, conversions of land and neglect (negative externalities).
Farmers’ interests were compromised and they felt that they were unable to assert their own preferences. However, now that they are increasingly turning to tourism services as well (farm camping, selling local products), they are benefiting more and more, and free of charge, from the past efforts of the tourism and nature conservation sector to energize tourism on the island.
4 These examples clearly illustrate that tourism-related problems are a result not only of market failure, but also of government failure (see Dubbink, 1999: 83-84).
5 Callon (1999) uses the term ‘framing’ rather than ‘ordering’. Borrowing from Goffman, Callon resorts to the concept of frame. However, framing is inextricably bound up with the modes of ordering as described in the previous two chapters. Modes of ordering per definition frame and structure relations. I therefore use the term ordering instead of framing.
6 Latour (2004: 124) recently illustrated this principle by pointing at the 8000 people who die each year from automobile accidents in France. They are externalized as, for the time of being, the rapid use of cars is ‘worth’ much more in France than 8000 innocent lives per year.
7 See e.g. the discussion in Chapter 8 on imposing additional levies on air transport. One of the unintended consequences might be that fewer tourists visit developing countries.
8 Already in 1906 De Muy on Texel was designated as a ‘nature monument’ (Koppen, 2002: 154).
9 UNEP played an important role in various conferences and expert meetings. In 1974 UNEP and UNCTAD convened the Cocoyoc seminar in Mexico, which brought together two major strands of that period’s alternative development movement, namely those who argued that priority should be given to satisfying the basic needs of people (food, water, shelter) and those concerned with the capacity of the planet’s resources and environment to sustain such growth.
Since then, the term ‘sustainable development’ has served to catalyse debate over the relationship between economic growth and the natural resource base upon which it depends (Pezzoli, 1997: 551). Together with IUCN and WWF, UNEP was also involved in the preparation of the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN, 1980), which identified three objectives for conservation. First, the maintenance of essential ecological processes and life-support systems; second, the preservation of genetic diversity; and third, the sustainable development of species and ecosystems. In the World Conservation Strategy, conservation and development are defined in such a way that their compatibility becomes inevitable. If it is taken for granted that development ought to be ‘sustainable’, meaning that it must be capable of being extended indefinitely for the benefit of future generations, conservation and development are of course ‘mutually dependent’ and not incompatible as they have seemed in the past (Adams, 1990; Achterberg, 1994). Although the Strategy is well rounded and plausible, especially Adams criticized it for its naïve failure to recognize the essentially political nature of the development process. First, conservation is seen to be above ideology. There is no apparent awareness of arguments about the social production of nature. Second, the Strategy assumed that ‘people’ could exist in some kind of vacuum, outside the influence of inequality, class or power structures (Adams, 1990: 51).
10 See also Driessen and Glasbergen (2002) for a comparison between the Dutch environmental policy in the 1970s and the new paradigm which emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s.
11 See: http://www.biodiv.org/programmes/socio-eco/tourism/guidelines.asp
12 See: http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/rec/Task%20Force%20Report%20to%20WCPA-SC2.pdf
13 See: http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/sdissues/tourism/tour2.htm#dec
14 However, the World Tourism Organization concluded that the 7th session of the CSD did not succeed in effectively promoting a more concerted action by the many intergovernmental agencies and major groups involved. The lack of resources and the absence of a clear mandate are probably the two main reasons for the failure (WTO, 2002: 15).
15 Recently UNEP and ICLEI (2003) published a report on the role of tourism in the Local Agenda 21. Only a handful of relevant cases could be identified where a truly comprehensive and strategic approach to tourism had been taken
Chapter 7 Tourism and sustainable development
related to Local Agenda 21. Especially islands, historic towns receiving relatively large numbers of tourists, and established tourists resorts seem to be inclined to develop a Local Agenda 21 focusing on tourism related issues.
16 A recent attempt to start a project on corporate social responsibility (maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen) in the tourism sector within the framework of NIDO, the Dutch National Initiative for Sustainable Tourism, failed due to lack of cooperation from the tourism sector (Cramer, pers. com.).
17 see http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/iye.htm. See also Man (2003) and Vivanco (2002).
18 Notably, the World Tourism Organization organized a side-event on tourism and poverty alleviation, namely the STEP programme.
19 see http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/partnerships/list_partnerships.htm
20 For example, in 1993 Boers and Bosch published The Earth as Holiday Resort. The book was funded by the European Union and translated from Dutch into English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Spanish.
21 They function as epistemic notions, that is, regularities in the thinking of a particular period, structuring the understanding of reality without actors necessarily being aware of it (see Hajer, 2003b).
22 In 1997 I elaborated a similar way of thinking based on scenarios developed by the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR, 1995) and on the so-called transformation model (Dietvorst 1992; Ashworth and Dietvorst 1995). I presented four tentative scenarios (see also Duim, 1997b) that illustrate the inevitability of diversity with respect to the seriousness of the perceived environmental risks and the extent to which one is prepared to accept social risks in order to mitigate the impact on the environment. Recently RIVM (2004) presented four scenarios for sustainable development.
23 Not all accept this perspective with open arms. For example, Sharpley (2000: 1) recently claimed that this conceptualization of sustainable tourism development as a kind of free-floating development process is undoubtedly attractive. By neatly side-stepping the need for a concise definition, according to Sharpley (2000), it nevertheless does little to sharpen the focus of study onto the processes and overall viability of the concept
24 Therefore, sustainable tourism development is considered a complex and multifaceted notion. To clarify this multidimensionality to various target groups, Dam (1997) developed the ‘corporate response model to the macro-marketing environment’ (Dam, 1997). This model differentiates among four ‘margins’ within which enterprises, or tourism regions, operate. These margins are ‘profit’, ‘risk’, ‘ecological’ and ‘socio-cultural’. In our research projects it proved to be an excellent tool for communication (see e.g. Duim et al., 2001; Duim and Caalders, 2004).
25 The terms eco-tourism, green or alternative tourism are by no means unique, but the most widely used of a catalogue of many similar terms are nature tourism, low-impact tourism, adventure tourism, soft tourism, responsible tourism, special interest tourism, eco-ventures, nature travel, rural tourism, travel with mother earth, anthropological tourism, jungle tourism, eco-travel, cultural tourism, wilderness tourism, non-consumptive wildlife tourism and safari tourism (see Jaakson, 1997). Moreover, as Mowforth and Munt (2003) claim, ‘new forms’ of tourism, although often proponents of ‘sustainability’, merely paint themselves as green or ethical. But the paint is likely to represent only a thin gloss over a course of action, which remains largely within the dominant modus operandi of the tourism industry.
26 In some cases it is assumed possible within reasonable limits to predict the consequences for the quality of the environment of a certain intensity of tourism activity by means of dose-effect relationships. In many cases, however, uncertainties and ambiguities surround this relationship (WRR, 1995: 36). Elsewhere, we extensively discuss the general weaknesses of dose–effect research in tourism (see Duim and Philipsen, 1995; Duim et al., 1999; Duim and Caalders, 2002). Complexity and costs are among the main reasons why only a few dose-effect studies have been undertaken. Especially studies aiming to show causal relationships between tourism activities and environmental consequences are scarce.
27 Similarly, Koppen (2002: 145 and 257) argues that societal debates about these normative decisions are very important.
Decisions are often only indirectly related to insights into nature based on natural sciences. More often they depend on the moral, aesthetic and other cultural meanings of nature. Societal debates should therefore encompass and reflect both the resource and the Arcadian approach.
28 The above also illustrates the limited value of Coase’s theorem, as discussed in section 7.1. As Callon (1988b: 265) explains, it presupposes the existence of identified agents who are capable of negotiating with each other, i.e. of defining their interests and measuring benefits accruing to them or, conversely, the harmful effects of which they are the victims. Coase’s theorem also needs externalities that have been confirmed and acknowledged as well as property rights allocated in such a way that the identities and responsibilities of the source agents could be established, as can those of the target agents. However, in realty, the identification of agents, externalities and property rights asks for extensive negotiations and continuous ordering, which never cease. Not only in the case of environmental impacts, but also – and even more – in the case of social and cultural impacts. Referring to the latter, generally speaking there has been a shift away from such simplifications in cultural studies of tourism within some modernization or dependency frameworks. Instead, tourism researchers now focus on people as active and strategic users of culture, participating in contexts where no single set of cultural interpretations has an inherent claim to truth or authenticity. As Wood (1993,
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183 pp. 66-68) claims, tourism has its own peculiar dynamics, which make it an interesting and challenging field of study, but its impact is always played out in an already dynamic and changing cultural context. Clearly, assessing – let along valuating – the impacts of tourism in such a context is difficult, as we have seen in discussing tourism developments in our case study areas.
29 See also Buiten Consultancy (2003).
30 See for more information http://www.uneptie.org/pc/tourism/
31 Since 1995 especially universities and NGOs, and to a lesser extent governmental agencies, have supported the SDA tourism programme. Participation of representatives from the tourism industry was an exception to the rule. See for Chapter 8 for a brief overview.
32 See Peeters et al. (2004) for an overview of the important contribution of transport to environmental problems.
33 See e.g. http://www.milieucentraal.nl/data/vervoer/domein_vervoer_set.html and Peeters et al. (2004)
34 Boissevain (1996: 14-20) discerns six strategies: covert resistance, hiding, fencing, ritual, organized protest, and aggression.
35 From an environmental point of view, pro-poor initiatives are questionable. As Ceron et al. (2004) state, poor countries may ‘buy’ development at the cost of a comparably large environmental impact. Similarly, Opschoor and Straaten (1993) argue that poverty alleviation at the global level would both directly and indirectly (through its impact on population size) reduce long-term environmental pressure. However, this is likely to come about only via economic development and this implies a short-term additional environmental burden. Poverty alleviation without changing the quality of economic growth is therefore pointless.
Innovations in sustainable tourism development
Chapter 8
Chapter 8 Innovations in sustainable tourism development
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