Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
plethora of externalities affecting the environment (Mowforth and Munt,
2009). Given the preference for micro-studies in tourism, it is only now that
we have counted the total sum of resource use and degradation attributable to
tourism development. These negative outcomes continue to increase as the sys-
tem links extended multi-markets to more destinations through a multiplicity
of marketing and distribution channels; it is a process which is unlikely to
change, partly because the externalities have not been internalized by the sup-
ply sector and partly through inertia in the system. It is instructive to note the
way in which Urry (2007, p268) refers to the automobile as a central lynchpin
of mobilities:
Such locked-in institutional processes are extremely difficult to
reverse as billions of agents around the world co-evolve and
adapt to it and built their lives around its strange mixture of
coercion and flexibility.
The same prognosis readily applies to tourism. Given the interdependencies of
organizational and governmental systems which promulgate growth as a
panacea, we are seemingly locked into the current tourism system. The group
of institutions which develop policy guidance, offer investment opportunities,
represent tourism business interests and include a myriad of tourist associa-
tions around the world therefore tend to be guided by the following tenets of
tourism:
• Reduce the perceived cost of travel in order to stimulate higher levels of
demand than hitherto, even though the returns may be marginal.
• Avoid the internalization of externalities, including CO
2
emissions.
• Stimulate increased supply as an economic goal, regardless of saturation
of demand.
•
Encourage a travel culture across societies through partnerships with
media, government and tourist associations.
•
Promulgate sustainable tourism and pro-poor tourism as a response to a
critique of tourism as neo-colonialism.
The current tourism system is imbued with these values. It offers unlimited
travel opportunities for those with the wherewithal, ironically at the expense
of those who will bear the initial thrust of adverse climatic change. It perpet-
uates a system which is profligate of the world's resources, especially in
relation to public goods where there is a wider ecological significance at stake.
It is also one which perpetuates the inequalities between western and other
societies (Mowforth and Munt, 2009). There are exceptions to this general-
ization, but many pro-environmental tourism schemes are small-scale, and
thus whilst they may show the way ahead, they do not, even collectively, pro-
vide an answer. The reality is constant degradation of the base on which
tourism relies.
The TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) report (2009)
has referred to the way in which the world's natural capital is being continually
