Tourism and sustainable development
7 Tourism and sustainable development
7.2 A short history of the relation between tourism and sustainable development
7.2.1 Three waves of environmental concern
Chapter 7 Tourism and sustainable development
Analytically speaking, two kinds of ‘externalities’ are discerned in this chapter (see also table 7.3). The first category stems from the fact that people and things that have been translated into tourismscapes can become polluted, depleted, exploited, inflated, overcrowded, subject to criminality or vandalism and the like; they are effects of elements constituting and constituted by the actor-networks. Here, the particular mixture of people and things leads to sustainability issues within tourismscapes. Essentially, the robustness of the actor-network itself is at stake.
Generally speaking, actors constituting tourismscapes increasingly feel responsible for these kinds of externalities as they include the danger of tourismscapes collapsing. Therefore, all around the world initiatives have been started to internalize some of these externalities.
However, tourismscapes also produce externalities in components of the environment that have not or not yet been defined and/or ‘ordered’ as part of the tourismscapes. Depletion of the ozone layer, climate change, the decline of biodiversity or the exclusion of particular regions or population groups (like ‘the poor’ in Africa) from tourism activities are just a few examples. They belong to a new generation of ‘wicked’ problems that often manifest themselves less directly and clearly than the first category, as they are supranational in scale and/or have a lengthy time dimension (see WRR, 2003). I shall discuss this distinction in more detail in Sections 7.3 and 7.4.
First, I shall historically depict the relation between tourism and sustainability.
7.2 A short history of the relation between tourism and sustainable
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224). Yet, from the outset there was also a close link between this kind of environmental protection and recreation and tourism. National parks in the United States were founded, as in the case of Yellowstone, for the ‘joy and benefit of people’ as well. Aesthetic romanticism, recreation and the development of ‘worthless’ or ‘waste’ lands through tourism also characterized the creation of the first national parks in Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Hall and Page, 2002: 253).
In other words, national parks, reserves and landscapes have underlain tourismscapes for more than a century. In countries like the USA, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the formal organization of nature conservation started at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Adams, 1990). In the Netherlands, the Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Dierenbescherming) was founded in 1864, followed in 1905 by the Society for the Preservation of Nature (Natuurmonumenten). The latter has become the most influential nature conservation organization in the Netherlands and an important network in which various interests meet (Windt, 1995; Koppen, 2002).
One of the founders of this association, J.P. Thysse, also promoted Texel as a paradise for naturalists: ’In the whole world no landscape more important than the dunes can be found. In terms of greatness and originality the landscape of the North Sea equals mountain ranges’ (in:
Fey, 1992; see also Duim et al., 2001; author’s translation). At the beginning of the twentieth century, J.P. Thysse worked on the island as a teacher and was impressed by the number of plants and birds8. Many of his ideas on nature conservation were revolutionary at the time but today are generally accepted.
Ideas for an international organization for nature conservation were already mooted in 1909.
In fact, 1913 saw the signing of an Act of Foundation of a Consultative Commission for the International Protection of Nature. The Act eventually resulted in the International Office for the Protection of Nature (1934) and much later evolved into the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is now known as IUCN – the World Conservation Union (Adams, 1990).
A second wave of environmentalism, which came in the late 1960s and early 1970s, differed fundamentally from the first. The second wave started with the Report of the Club of Rome (Meadows, 1972) and the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm in 1972. It was the first step in a range of efforts to combat international environmental problems and linked environmental problems to underdevelopment. As poverty induces environmental problems, economic development is compulsory. In terms of the 1972 Conference Declaration (United Nations, 1972):
In the developing countries most of the environmental problems are caused by underdevelopment.
Millions continue to live far below the minimum levels required for a decent human existence, deprived of adequate food and clothing, shelter and education, health and sanitation. Therefore, the developing countries must direct their efforts to development, bearing in mind their priorities and the need to safeguard and improve the environment. For the same purpose, the industrialized countries should make efforts to reduce the gap between themselves and the developing countries.
Chapter 7 Tourism and sustainable development
The central belief in the 1970s was that a fundamental reorganization of the social order was vital for an ecologically sound society. The dominant discourses were partly anti-statist and anti-capitalist in nature, causing considerable gaps between mainstream politics and the countervailing power of, among others, the emerging environmental movement (Arts et al., 2000a: 64). However, the ecology-inspired demand for radical transformation in the early 1970s resounded only marginally in the institutional arrangements of industrial society (Mol, 2001: 50).
Among the most conspicuous results was the establishment of environmental ministries and agencies in over 100 countries and the explosive growth in the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dedicated to environmental protection and related issues (see Hens and Nath, 2003), the foundation the UNEP9 (United Nations Environment Program), and expanding environmental legislation and planning. But as Mol (2001: 50) concludes, ecological reform following the second wave did not affect the basic institutions that were held responsible for environmental disruption.
Tourism was no exception to this rule. It played a marginal role in these environmental discussions. Under the influence of the rise of neo-liberalism, tourism was considered a ‘clean industry’ that has no negative effects on the environment worthy of mention (Bundesamt für Naturschütz 1997). Nevertheless, by the end of the 1970s, critics like Turner and Ash (1975), Krippendorf (1975), Armanski (1978) and Prahl and Steinecke (1979) were amongst the first to warn of the possible detrimental effects of tourism. Armanski’s critique in 1978, for example, was outspoken:
Die planlose profitoreintierte Expansion hat für immer viele Orte und Landschaften verschandelt, die sie den Touristen als ideale Erholungsgebiete anpreist. Der Tourismus hat zwar Dornröschen geweckt – sie aber sogleich in eine Dienstmagd verwandelt, die onhmachtig der Zerstörung ihrer vertrauter Umgebung zusehen muss (ibid.: 56).
And in their famous book The Golden Hordes, Turner and Ash (1975:15) declared that:
international tourism is like King Midas in reverse; a device for the systematic destruction of everything that is beautiful in the world.
These critics were, however, hardly heard. In the tourism sector, the level of awareness was low and proposed measures to combat environmental destruction through tourism were neither adopted nor implemented.
A third upsurge of concern became noticeable in the late 1980s. The Brundtland report of 1987 (WCED, 1987) and the 1992 UNCED conference in Rio de Janeiro are often cited as the markers and milestones of this third wave (Mol, 2001: 52): the concept of sustainable development has been debated ever since.
Compared to the second wave there were at least two major distinctions.10 First, environmental issues were increasingly dealt with in a ‘global context’, thus underlining the growing importance of those environmental problems that concern and challenge the entire world. Second, the last decade of the twentieth century saw the commencement of actual environment-induced transformations of the institutional order of modernity (ibid.: 53). Not conflict but an
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embracing consensus discourse (‘sustainable development’) was aimed at, and to a large extent succeeded in getting support from the right, left and green alike. Environmental problems were increasingly seen as manageable issues, to be managed not only by the state but also by a wider range of cooperative stakeholders. In addition, problems were conceived as challenges to innovation – technological rather than political – and as an opportunity to reconcile ecology and economy, therefore urging state, market and civil society agents to contribute their share (Arts et al., 2000a: 64).
Table 7.1 Three waves of environmental concern
First Wave Second Wave Third Wave
Beginning Ca. 1900 Ca. 1970 Late 1980s
Central notion Nature conservation Limits to growth Global change
Focal point Protection of reserves and species
Minimizing additions and withdrawals
Sustainable development
Results Protected areas and species
National environmental agencies, laws, NGOs
Ecological reform of modern institutions around production and consumption
Tourism Discovery of nature as a resource for tourism
• Only a few, and often ignored, critics of tourism
• Little notice of effects of tourism
• Environmental
management in tourism sector
• Call for ‘sustainable tourism’
Source: adapted from Mol, 2001: 49
Although the concept of sustainable development was already used in the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN, 1980), it only became fashionable seven years later through the report Our Common Future of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), which was chaired by Brundtland. The Brundtland Commission was formed under the auspices of the United Nations, which gave the deliberations more credibility than the World Conservation Strategy (Nelissen et al., 1997) and brought the discussion into the established political arenas, on to the political agendas and to literally millions of people all over the world.
The report not only popularized the concept of sustainable development, but also demonstrated that anthropogenic environmental problems are fundamentally interdisciplinary and ought to be regarded as such (Hens and Nath, 2003: 11). Moreover, it placed elements of the sustainable development debate within the economic and political context of international development (Adams, 1990: 57-59). Indeed, as Hardy et al. (2002: 480) argue, the concept emerged at a time when scientific economic, socio-cultural and environmental problems converged. Moreover, it received bureaucratic support because of its relationship with economic aspects of development: it did not reject economic growth but rather put forward the notion that economic growth could enhance environmental protection and that this could be done through a free market.
Chapter 7 Tourism and sustainable development
In the Brundtland report sustainable development is based on the concepts of basic needs and environmental limits (WCED, 1987):
Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without comprising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The concept of sustainable development does imply limits – not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities. But technology and social organization can be both managed and improved to make way for a new era of economic growth.
Environmental limits, however, were set not by the environment but by technology and social organization. According to Adams (1990), this implies a subtle but extremely important transformation of the ecologically based concept of sustainable development, by going beyond concepts of physical sustainability to the socio-economic context of development. Whereas the World Conservation Strategy started from the premise of the need to conserve ecosystems and sought to demonstrate why this made good economic sense, ‘Our Common Future’ starts with people (ibid.: 59). What is more, the report is also global in scope and very ambitious. It acknowledges that sustainable development is an uphill battle:
Yet in the end, sustainable development is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs. We do not pretend that the process is easy or straightforward. Painful choices have to be made. Thus in the final analysis, sustainable development must rest on political will.
This political will was challenged at the famous United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. The ‘Earth Summit’, as it became known, was attended by 116 heads of state or government, 172 countries and more than 20,000 delegates, members of the press and representatives of international and national NGOs (Pezzoli, 1997).
Since then, the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21 and the Conventions on Desertification, Climate and Biodiversity have been much debated though a little less implemented.
Compared to the Brundtland report, Rio was not new, and for many it was a failure, but it did generate an international consensus on the principles of sustainable development (Achterberg, 1994). In the Rio Declaration (UNCED, 1992), the principles of intra- and inter-generational equity are stressed once again (see Principle 3), as is the essential task of eradicating poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development (Principle 5). Clearly, this calls for reducing and eliminating unsustainable patterns of production and consumption (Principle 8), for example by effective environmental legislation (Principle 11) and by applying the precautionary approach where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage (Principle 15). The Declaration also stresses the vital role of women (Principle 20) and indigenous people (Principle 22), and calls on states and people to ‘cooperate in good faith and in a spirit of partnership in the fulfilment of these principles’.
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