The Evolution of Development Theory and Tourism - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 33

inequality, Seers (1969, 1977) introduced the concept of self-reliance to his
definition. A further expansion of the term can be seen in the work of Todaro
(1994), who outlined three core values (sustenance, self-esteem and freedom)
and three objectives of development. The first objective is to increase the
availability and distribution of basic human needs, the second is to raise the
standard of living, which involves: higher incomes, better education, provi-
sion of more jobs, and greater attention to cultural and humanistic values
thereby promoting greater individual and national self-esteem. The final
objective is to expand the range of economic and social choices so that indi-
viduals and nations are not dependent on other people or countries. The
expansion of freedoms is also at the heart of Sen's (1999) Development as
Freedom , with calls for expanding freedoms in the areas of economic oppor-
tunities, political freedoms, social facilities, transparency guarantees and
protective security. Acknowledging the interconnectedness of significant
societal processes, Lund (2010: 20) offers a fairly broad definition of develop-
ment as 'the reproduction and transformations process, which somehow
impinge on inequality, impoverishment and human insecurity'.
With the growth of the environmental movement, development expan-
ded to encompass the highly debated term, sustainability (Redclift, 2000).
The most cited definition of sustainable development, proposed by the World
Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987: 43), is 'devel-
opment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the abil-
ity of future generations to meet their own needs'. The 1992 United Nations
(UN) Conference on the Environment and Development (also known as the
Earth Summit or Rio Conference) produced Agenda 21 (see Keating, 1994),
an action plan for achieving sustainability based on the involvement of local
communities using a bottom-up approach. The second Earth Summit
(Rio

5) held five years later noted an increasing reliance of some developing
countries on tourism and the need to plan appropriately (Holden, 2000). The
Rio

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20 Conference was held in Rio again in 2012 and included a meeting
on Tourism for a Sustainable Future , where tourism is seen as 'a key instrument
for eradicating poverty, responding to climate change, environmental sus-
tainability and contributing to the Millennium Development Goals'
(UNWTO, 2011c). As a reflection of the changes noted above, not only has
the meaning of development altered over time, but how development is mea-
sured has also changed. The traditional measures for the quality of life such
as per capita income or gross national product (GNP) have been eclipsed by
other measurements, such as the Human Development Index influenced by
the work of Amartya Sen (mentioned above). Other indices, such as the
Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, 1992 (Brown, 1992), illustrate the
shift from an economic focus. Bhutan is known for its Gross Happiness
Index with nine domains and indicators (psychological indicators, health,
education, culture, time use, good governance, community vitality, ecologi-
cal diversity and resilience and living standards) (Ura et al. , 2012). The UN

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