Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
is still moving in the wrong direction (Sharpley, 2009). This message has been
reinforced by the EU (COM, 2003, p18):
Despite these many initiatives, which exist from international
down to local level and are available everywhere, there is still no
significant change from unsustainable patterns of consumption
and production in European tourism.
The issues, response and approaches presented by UNEP are to be detailed in
a report to be published in late 2010. The gathering of data and analysis for
the report is referred to as an 'open architecture' framework to reach consen-
sus on transforming scenarios. We hope that this topic offers a contribution
as to how tourism might be re-shaped to meet the requirements of a new green
economic order.
Currently, tourism is not only a social phenomenon, which has continued
to flourish in most societies, but it is also a complex mesh of public and pri-
vate organizations delivering production and consumption of leisure. We are
referring primarily to domestic tourism, which is estimated to be ten times the
size of the international market to which most scholars refer. Academic inter-
est has predominantly focused on western tourism development, and much
less is written about domestic tourism in the context of a developing world.
The growth of domestic tourism in Brazil, China and India might take a dif-
ferent form to western societies. For example, Urry's (2007) new mobilities
paradigm (seen as so important to recast the social sciences) explains the mul-
tiplicity of connections in societies which are essentially at a distance, fast and
often involving physical movement. This is essentially a western outlook.
While the five interdependent mobilities described by Urry (see Chapter 3) are
growing in the developing world, given the widespread levels of poverty, they
play a much less significant role in the structure of everyday life. Hall (2010)
comments:
… the concept of 'vacation rights' highlights massive global
inequality in access to such mobility. For much of the world's
population, and notably those in the least developed countries
… the concept is meaningless and irrelevant by virtue of the
majority of people's poverty, powerlessness and immobility.
It is also important to note that within developed countries there is consider-
able inequality, and significant sections of the population for whom
international and even domestic tourism plays little part in their lives.
There is no overall estimate of tourism's worth in terms of social value set
against environmental impact. The international market has grown from 25
million arrivals in 1950 to 842 million in 2006; this amounts to an average
increase of 7 per cent per annum. Thus, the combination of domestic and
international tourism forms a major economic sector which consumes an
increasing level of finite resources. It is also a substantial and increasing
polluter, especially in relation to the production of GHGs. The contribution
