Tourism, Development and the Environment - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 269

In England and Wales, the control of national parks is established within
Town and Country Planning Acts and control over development of tourism
and other activities is achieved through strict planning regulations rather
than state ownership of the parks' resources. 3 A crucial factor in the achieve-
ment of environmental sustainability is the extent to which guidelines articu-
late with planning procedures and regulations. The parks' planning authorities
are required to produce documents outlining policies and proposals relating
to activities controlled by the various Planning Acts, and details of manage-
ment strategies for environmental resources, services and facilities. As a result
of complex and often ambiguous planning structures, such activities as farm-
ing, forestry, mineral production and, more recently, large-scale tourism
threaten to erode the environmental quality of many UK national parks.
In addition to national parks, a diverse range of designations in the UK
confers special protection to coastal areas, areas of outstanding natural beauty,
trees and woodland and a range of architectural and historical environments,
all of which play host to significant numbers of tourists. A further planning
device for promoting sustainable tourism is through coastal zone manage-
ment (CZM). Owing to the popularity of coastal resorts, the integration of
tourism considerations with those for water quality, for example, represents
an important step towards achieving the goals of sustainability. However, of
the 20 different types of designation denoting protected status (stemming
from 30 Acts of Parliament), none guarantees absolute protection from the
impacts of development. For example, a study of sites of special scientific
interest (SSSIs) in the UK in 1990 found that 40% had been damaged, most of
the permanent damage stemming from activities given planning permission.
To summarise, then, land use planning and a system of designation col-
lectively provide a framework which, in theory, balances the physical capaci-
ties of the resource base against the different interests that are involved in
development, providing valuable regulatory mechanisms. However, even
within developed countries with established planning systems, sustainable
resource use has been sometimes difficult to achieve. Thus, in much of the
developing world where tourism is rapidly expanding within a context of
diverse and dynamic social, cultural and environmental conditions, the uni-
versal relevance of any particular form of development 'blueprint', such as
proposed in many of the sustainable tourism development guides, has been
brought into question. The remainder of this chapter will, therefore, move
beyond the 'static' blueprint formula for pursuing sustainable tourism, and in
so doing question the Western-centric notion of sustainable development.
Beyond the Sustainable Development Blueprint
Before proposing an alternative view of how environmentally sustainable
tourism may be achieved, it is useful first of all to return briefly to criticisms