Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2 5
AND TOURISM
Andrew Holden
Introduction
Given the reliance of tourism upon the 'environment' and 'nature', it is surprising that the
environmental discourses of tourism have received little attention within and beyond tourism
geographies. Using Dryzeck's (1997) defi nition of a discourse as a 'shared way of appre-
hending the world', it is evident that environmental discourses ultimately are relevant to
understanding our actions towards our surroundings, including those of tourism stakeholders.
This chapter focuses on environmental discourses and tourism, with the aim of illustrating
the possibilities available for framing research on tourism, space and environment.
For environmental discourses to exist there has to be recognition that we have a relation-
ship to 'nature', the effects of which may be harmful or benefi cial for ourselves and to other
species. For Dryzeck (1997), environmental discourses are rooted in industrial society and
our development path has now brought us to a point of refl ection on how we interact with
nature. The complexity that underlies this seemingly simple process of refl ection is an
amalgam of infl uences including religion, ethics, politics and economics.
The lexicon of environmental issues is espoused from a variety of sources, including
government, business, industry, non-government organisations (NGOs), media and the
general populace. Pollution, acid rain, ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, global warming and
climate change are examples of what are widely accepted as environmental 'problems'
resulting from human activity, which pose a threat to the ecosystem services upon which our
well-being depends (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). The recognition of these
problems is described by Beck (1992) as a transformation to a 'risk society', within which
especially Western societies have become focused on environmental issues, as societies have
become more aware of and display a greater sensitivity to environmental risk. However,
whilst there may be near unanimity in the recognition of environmental issues, conversely
the paradigms and approaches to their solutions are diverse.
Types of environmental discourse
Accepting discourse as a shared way of apprehending the world, it would seem that there is
increasingly a shared common global discourse that recognises that the path of development
