Even if these plans encounter difficulties in implementation, the very process of planning and expending efforts to promote the vision among decision makers on both sides of the border, with the encouragement and support of international organizations or NGOs, constitutes an important positive process and encourages ties and contacts between leaders and others from both sides of the border. It is also a good way to try to turn vision into reality, strengthening and warming peace relations, as tourism development plays a central role in these plans.
The actual process of initiating and planning trans-frontier peace parks requires the strengthening of trans-border political ties as well as readiness and good will on both sides of the border. The stage of planning and authorizing such projects may be long because of objective delays in the form of official regulation on either side of the fence, and subjective difficulties based on fears of developments that might evolve as a result of the process. Peace parks may actually be the optimal example of environmental, social and tourism cooperation in shared border areas. It entails activity towards various aims and must include a ready supply of optimism and good will in relations between the nations. The fact that in recent years new peace parks have been declared and established in various parts of the world (Kliot, 2002) is the best evidence of the success and relevance of trans-frontier parks for introducing and implementing environmental and peace values as well as cooperation between neighbouring countries, with tourism playing a central role.
historical struggles that have developed over the years. Around these factors, and others, attractions develop that bear witness to the values of historical and national heritage, nature and ecology. When tourism planning and development are added to this mix, tourism potential can be realized. When tourism development and peace play central roles in the story of an area, its attractiveness to tourists grows.
In many cases, feelings and messages are combined with lessons from the past and hopes for the future. Placing a border in a museum space turns it into an area of memory, and it becomes an object for which history has stopped. It also becomes a product to be exhibited, catalogued and commemorated.
Factors such as history, heritage values, natural and environmental resources shared by neighbouring states join together with the great symbolism that is evoked among visitors to border sites, turning them into museum elements.
These form the background for the significance that peace holds for these tourism sites, as has been presented in this chapter. Tourists visiting these sites have the opportunity to feel and experience a locale, and to think about its symbolism when peace plays a central role in this experience.
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7 The Role of Sport Events in Peace Tourism
N. S
chuleNkorf1and D. e
DwarDS21Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand, 2Faculty of Business, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia
Sport has a crucial role to play in the efforts to improve the lives of people around the world. Sport builds bridges between individuals and across
communities, providing a fertile ground for sowing the seeds of development and peace.
(Willi Lemke, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on Sport for Development and Peace)
Introduction
Peace is a policy goal that receives almost universal endorsement, but is extremely hard to achieve where there is an absence of individuals who trust and appreciate each other. Building trust and appreciation between individuals and groups is a complex issue because of the participatory processes and cooperation needed to achieve desired outcomes. If peace is broadly defined to include connotations of personal, community and social wellbeing as well as the absence of intergroup conflict and tension, then there are opportunities for creating a peaceful togetherness between people of different backgrounds. To actualize this potential, people have to come together in the right environment, one in which they can actively participate, break through prescribed realities, connect with others, and learn to trust and respect one another.
Sport events can provide a socially pleasant and/or beneficial environment.
Sport is one of the most popular leisure activities in the world, as it creates a fascinating phenomenon: people from all over the world love to play, attend, watch, listen to, talk about, experience and even feel sport, often irrespective of the level of performance. Sport encourages physical health and fitness, and provides people around the globe with a social experience. For these reasons, sport has been described as a language which all people in the world understand and speak and which is able to emotionally combine and unite groups (Dyreson, 2003). Chalip (2006) argues that sport and sport events have the power to
promote dialogue, solidarity, understanding, integration and teamwork, even when other forms of negotiation have been unsuccessful.
Sport is an important activity within tourism, and tourism and travel are fundamentally associated with sport events (Hinch and Higham, 2004). Sport is recognized as a significant travel activity whether it is a primary or secondary feature of the trip. From a tourism1 perspective, sport events provide an opportunity for friendly competition and social approximation between international tourists, local sportspeople, their teams and communities. In divided societies, sport projects have recently been used as a strategic tool to improve intergroup relations and advance inter-community development (Gasser and Levinsen, 2004; Sugden, 2006; Stidder and Haasner, 2007;
Schulenkorf, 2008b).
The focus of this chapter is on understanding how positive social impacts can be created and leveraged through sport events to achieve lasting peaceful outcomes for disparate communities. The chapter presents findings from a larger study that examined two ‘sport for development’ event projects in war- torn Sri Lanka to identify how event planners and managers can maximize and leverage social benefits for participants, spectators, supporters and the wider community. The chapter is underpinned by a discussion of the concept of