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of the sustainable development paradigm upon which sustainable tourism is
based and, consequently, founders.
Sustainable development: A critique
The irrelevance of mainstream sustainable development theory owes
much to the persistence and impenetrableness of now discredited environ-
ment and development narratives. Such narratives gain credibility and pot-
ency in their acceptance by policymakers and are enshrined as truisms by the
élite interest groups that profit from them. Development agencies disseminate
the narratives giving such calamitous hypotheses as The Tragedy of the Commons
(Hardin, 1968) global recognition and an unquestioned belief in their devel-
opmental value. When such narratives become institutionalised as 'received
wisdom', their durability and perceived merit become even more entrenched
(Leach & Mearns, 1996). As Adams and Hulme (1992: 3) contend, their 'influ-
ence and durability is not related to their actual economic, social or environ-
mental achievements . . . but to the interests of a complex web of politicians,
policy makers, bureaucrats, donors, technical specialists and private sector
operators whose needs are served by the narrative'.
The perpetuation of sustainable development's underlying assumptions
has achieved little more than justifying conventional top-heavy, interven-
tionist approaches to environmental and developmental initiatives in much
of the developing world, reinforcing public acceptance of sustainable devel-
opment rhetoric, and the institutions vested with responsibility for imple-
menting it. As Sneddon (2000: 525) comments, 'sustainable development
privileges global environmental problems and institutions, perceives pov-
erty rather than poverty-producing conditions as the root cause of envi-
ronmental degradation, reproduces economistic and developmentalist
biases, and advances a highly reductive interpretation of environment as
“static” resource'.
In recent years, many of these environment and development truisms
have been rejected. Many researchers have been quick to identify the limita-
tions, naïve assumptions and inappropriate recommendations embedded
within mainstream sustainable development rhetoric. For example, the very
assumption that economic growth must be sustained if national social and
environmental objectives are to be met disregards culturally diverse interpre-
tations of what 'development' itself means (Redclift, 1987).
More generally, sustainable development theory is replete with para-
doxes. The WCED, in essence, proposed growth and the alleviation of pov-
erty through the much maligned 'trickle-down effect' central to the
modernist school of development theory (see Chapter 2). At the same time,
the economic growth envisaged by the WCED would necessitate a five-fold
increase in energy use in the developing world, yet the commission went on
to say that 'the planetary ecosystem could not stand this, especially if the
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