Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9
Tourism, Development and
the Environment
Chris Southgate and Richard Sharpley
Introduction
The interrelationship between environment and development has occu-
pied academics and policymakers alike for several decades. Indeed, the con-
tested ideas as to what could constitute a sustainable future for the planet
and its inhabitants have fuelled a now weary intellectual debate. Only lat-
terly has tourism become ensconced at the heart of this debate, not least
because 'no other economic activity . . . transects so many sectors, levels and
interests as tourism' (Cater, 1995: 21). However, during two decades in
which academic boundaries have become increasingly blurred, a more intri-
cate and complex understanding of tourism, development and the environ-
ment has emerged. That is, tourism theory has, as Jafari (1989) famously
proposed, passed through four stages, from 'advocacy' to 'knowledge', in
particular with respect to tourism's developmental relationship with the
environment within which it functions (see Chapters 2 and 15).
The purpose of this chapter is to chart the convergence of once disparate
academic niches to establish the extent to which tourism can be developed
within the parameters of sustainable resource use. In so doing, it offers a
critique of the mainstream sustainable development discourse and the notion
of sustainable tourism which it has informed. Since the 1980s, the concept
of sustainable development has pervaded almost all avenues of human activ-
ity. From its ecocentric origins to it becoming enmeshed in mainstream
development discourse, the term has become a focus of debate, discussion
and conceptual confusion (Mundt, 2011). Few issues have spurned so many
narratives and counter-narratives and as Munro summarises, the term has
'been used to characterize almost any path to the kind of just, comfortable
and secure future to which everyone aspires' (Munro, 1995: 27). Indeed,
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