Tourism, Development and the Environment - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 271

increases were based on non-renewable fossil fuels' (WCED, 1987: 14). Thus,
Our Common Future hopes to have its cake and eat it (Adams, 1992).
In search of a more appropriate formula for sustainable development in
the developing world, radical commentators have questioned the recurrent
emphasis on sustained economic growth. The radical environmentalist per-
spective on sustainable development is first and foremost biocentric , elevat-
ing the intrinsic value of the natural world above the value given to it by
mankind. As Rees (1990: 18) contends, 'the emerging ecological crisis reveals
fatal flaws in the prevailing world-view. Our mechanical perception of the
biosphere is dangerously superficial and our continued belief in the possibil-
ity of sustainable development based on the growth-oriented assumptions of
neo-classical economics is illusory'. The green perspective gained momentum
in the 1970s in reaction to the dominant development paradigm which
emphasised modernisation and economic growth. To supporters of the bio-
centric view, we are no more than stewards of the earth, holding resources
on trust for the future. Emphasis is placed upon the very existence of the
earth's natural resources rather than the income flows which they can gener-
ate. The burgeoning green development literature also broaches the other-
wise unquestioned mainstream assumptions of what development itself
should be (Adams, 1992). For example, while the Brundtland Commission
emphasised the importance of 'meeting basic human needs', these 'needs'
have conventionally been defined according to a narrow ideological view of
the capitalist Western world (Redclift, 1992).
Also central to mainstream sustainable development thinking is the
unquestioned faith in free market institutions as the most effective and efficient
means of mitigating against economic 'externalities' associated with develop-
ment. Environmental policy in much of the industrialised world is today
founded upon the principle that 'the power of the market can be harnessed and
channelled towards the achievement of environmental goals' (Tietenberg, cited
in Rees, 1990: 386). The role of government has become one of ensuring that
the operation of the market is programmed to give the 'correct' cost signals to
producers and consumers. Command and control solutions or 'state environ-
mentalism', so the neoliberal argument maintains, lead to political (and hence
inefficient) allocation of environmental resources (Doyle, 1998). Again, the
applicability of the neoliberal perspective on sustainable development to devel-
oping world economies, often in need of a remedy against economic differentia-
tion rather than a catalyst, has attracted criticism from a radical socialist school,
one which focuses upon structures of power, the distribution of resources (espe-
cially land) and the relations of production which lay at the heart of under-
development (Redclift, 1987). Sustainability, according to this view, is
constrained by the unequal power relations that exist between the capitalist
core and periphery, and the power relations which exist within society at all
levels. This argument, of course, holds particular relevance for tourism, the
production of which is typified by unequal power relations (see Chapter 10).