Sustainable Tourism: Guiding Fiction, Social Trap or Path to Resilience?

TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH VOL. 38(1), 2013: 213–242ISSN (print): 0250–8281/ISSN (online): 2320–0308©2013 Tourism Recreation Researchhttp://www.trrworld.org

Is Concept of Sustainability Utopian: Ideally Perfectbut Impracticable?

STEPHEN McCOOL, RICHARD BUTLER, RALF BUCKLEY, DAVID WEAVER andBRIAN WHEELLER

ContextSustainable Tourism as a paradigm of development originated from the convergenceof several streams of thought nearly three decades ago. It has tended to follow a‘smaller is better’ theme but there are significant questions about the saliency ofthis theme in a 21st world characterized by change, contentiousness, conflict anduncertainty. Sustainable tourism is often linked with ecotourism and a dependencyon natural environments as a principal resource providing the basis for anexperiential product. The rise of systems thinking has led to new, and potentiallymore useful insights, about tourism as an economic development strategy in thiscontext. Questions about the future ability of sustainable tourism to spur not onlyprogress but the advancement of knowledge are presented and debated in thisprobe. The probe begins with a presentation by Steve McCool who presents a briefhistory of the development of the concept of sustainable tourism, provides anoverview of how 21st century conditions are significantly different than those inwhich the term arose and suggests a reformulation of the concept to one of enhancingresiliency in the face of stresses and strains on communities. Responses by DavidWeaver, Richard Butler, Ralf Buckley and Brian Wheeller suggest that academiahas a poor record of performance in addressing the real life issues confronting theglobe's economic woes through sustainable tourism. Several feel that globaleconomic and political power are so overwhelming as to make debates onsustainable tourism irrelevant. McCool responds to these criticisms by suggestingthat knowledge is the principal barrier to progress.

STEPHEN McCOOL is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Society and Conservation, College of Forestry andConservation, The University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA. e-mail: [email protected]

RICHARD BUTLER is Professor Emeritus at Strathclyde Business School, 199 Cathedral Street, Glasgow G4 0QU, Scotland,UK. e-mail: [email protected]

RALF BUCKLEY is Director at the International Centre for Ecotourism Research, Griffith University, Australia 4222.e-mail: [email protected]

DAVID WEAVER is Professor of Tourism Research, Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, Griffith BusinessSchool Gold Coast Campus, Griffith University, Queensland 4222, Australia. e-mail: [email protected]

BRIAN WHEELLER is Visiting Professor of Tourism at NHTV, Breda, The Netherlands. e-mail: [email protected]

Research Probe

Is Concept of Sustainability Utopian: McCool et al.

214 Tourism Recreation Research Vol. 38, No. 2, 2013

If the continuing search for sustainable tourismhas revealed anything, it is that it is critical that weask the right questions. Questions frame the dialogueand the pathways we choose to engage research,development and activism. Asking questions aboutthe future of sustainable tourism is important, foras I write this, the term is celebrating one-quartercentury since its popularization in the late 1980sfollowing the publication of the BrundtlandCommission Report (1987) ‘Our Common Future’.That report argued for a new mental model, termedsustainable development, to guide policy onenvironmental, social and economic issues. And too,the UNWTO (2011) has recently issued its newprojections for international travel, estimated to riseat an average annual rate of about 3.3% a year out to2030, stressing the capacity of not only the globe’stransportation infrastructure but posing significantchallenges as well as opportunities for those whoseek tourism as an economic development strategyand as a tool to boost revenues for protection andmanagement of the world’s declining naturalheritage.

Asking the right questions provokesadditional ones, e.g., who gets to ask the questions?Why them? Whose definitions ‘count’? How doesone secure the intergenerational equity at the heartof the concept of sustainability? What is sustainedby sustainable tourism? Who benefits fromsustainable tourism? Why shouldn’t all tourism besustainable? Is sustainable tourism simply amarketing tool designed to appeal to marketsegments with environmental sensitivities? Does thenotion have any real substantive value in thecontentious and complex world of development,environmental protection and governance thatconfronts much of the world’s population? Or is

sustainable tourism simply a ‘guiding fiction’— aconcept that effectively rallies social discourse butfails when it comes to the specifics ofimplementation (Shumway 1991)? I believe theconventional conception of sustainable tourism assmall scale tourism at the intersection of economicfeasibility, ecological sensitivity and socialacceptability no longer provides a constructivepathway to address these questions.

Sustainable tourism is often put forward asthe solution for many economic and environmentalwoes: by creating small businesses employing localpeople environmental impacts of tourism areminimized, personal incomes raised, and quality oflife is enhanced. The ‘smaller is better’ panacea isoften promoted in particular by large internationalconservation organizations seeking to achievepolitical and social support for lands set aside asparks and other similar protected areas. But in sopromoting a particular philosophy of economicdevelopment, conservation organizations—whosenearly total focus is on protection of biologicaldiversity—have privileged themselves inadvocating a model that actually may be rathernarrow in scope and of increasing irrelevance to21st century needs as pointed out by Colin Hunter(1995) nearly 20 years ago.

In this probe, I suggest that a reformulation ofthe notion of sustainable tourism will provide moreuseful insights, be more appropriate for 21st centuryissues and challenges and far more relevant to theneeds of the world’s seven billion people. This isnot simply a matter limited to the ivory tower ofacademic discourse: Many of these seven billionpeople live in or at the edge of extreme poverty,directly depend on natural resources for their daily

Sustainable Tourism: Guiding Fiction, Social Trap orPath to Resilience?

STEPHEN McCOOL*

* Context and concluding remarks are also contributed by Stephen McCool


Tourism Recreation Research Vol. 38, No. 2, 2013 215

sustenance and shelter and engage in livelihoodsvulnerable to policies and actions initiatedelsewhere. The debate begins first by briefly outliningthe rise of the term. This provides a foundation forunderstanding the social and political context outof which the notion of sustainable tourism arose,which I believe is significantly different from whatwe have now and will have in the future. The nextsection suggests that applying systems thinkingmay be helpful in re-framing sustainable tourisminto a concept that provides more productiveinsights. I conclude by arguing ‘we need to reframethe issue of sustainable tourism much moreexplicitly with a focus on one specific characteristicof the complex social-ecological system embeddingthe search for sustainable tourism’. The essay isimpressionistic, based on my involvement intourism research and other endeavours over theyears; it is not intended to provide a long list ofcitations. Along this journey, I hope to be a bitprovocative and raise questions that will form thebasis for a badly needed critical dialogue about thecharacter and utility of the term sustainable tourism.

A Brief History of the Development of the Conceptof Sustainable Tourism

The concept of sustainable tourism ascendedout of the confluence of two discrete stories, evolvingconcurrently, but separately, and eventuallyconverging in the late 1980s. One story is that ofincreasing social attention to tourism and itseconomic impacts. The other is of acceleratingconcern about economic development, particularlyfor nations and regions characterized by high levelsof poverty, poor access to health and education, andlimited capacity to engage in the global economicsystem. The two stories each have a series of threadswithin them that eventually lead to a conjunction ofconcerns about the future, the environmental andsocial consequences of tourism development andthe institutional purposes and structures foreconomic development.

For the tourism story, the important threadsinvolve the rapid growth of travel (as depicted inFigure 1) and its mounting penetration into adiversity of destinations, particularly in regionstypified by both low incomes and high biological

diversity. A second thread includes risingacknowledgement of the financial impacts oftourism and ultimately its potential as an economicdevelopment tool. In particular situations, naturaland cultural heritage became viewed as an engineof economic growth and therefore exploitationprovides useful benefits. The third thread centredon emerging apprehensions about the cultural andenvironmental consequences of tourism and themessy character of their resolution. Tourism wasseen to destroy (or more kindly ‘degrade’) the verybasis of a community’s tourism economy. These threethreads are well documented in the tourismliterature. They converged in the 1980s, ultimatelyleading to calls for ‘alternative’ forms of tourismsuch as ecotourism, responsible tourism andgeotourism.

Figure 1. UN World Tourism Organizationestimates of international arrival activity and

projections to the year 2030.

At the same time that tourism was receivingincreasing scrutiny about its effects, there wasmounting unease about the way in whichinternational development—aid to 3rd worldcountries—was proceeding. Many aid projects werelarge in scale, moved massive amounts of material(dams, irrigation projects, transportation systems),displaced enormous numbers of generallyimpoverished people from the project to some placeelse and often were implemented with littleengagement with the people most affected. This storycontains three streams as well. The first involvesaccelerating reservations about the impacts humanactivity were having on the natural environment(triggered initially by Rachel Carson’s powerful



debate about sustainability and institutionalresponse at the UN Conference on Environment andDevelopment held at Rio in 1992. Commonly termedthe ‘Earth Summit’, a principal output was Agenda21, a set of proposed national, regional and evenlocal policies to achieve sustainable developmentgoals.

During the late 1980s’ and following the RioConference, academics, planners and activistsbegan applying the notion of sustainabledevelopment to tourism. This idea ripened in theearly to mid 1990s. The earliest use of the term‘sustainable tourism’ in the title of a scientific articleoccurred in 1990 by J.J. Pigram. A new journal, TheJournal of Sustainable Tourism was launched in 1993.The first world conference on sustainable tourismwas held in 1995 in Spain. While these dates seemrelatively recent, the seeds for the term ‘sustainabletourism’ were planted early with the trends andthemes just identified.

At first, sustainable tourism was viewed as aparticular form of tourism, one that encompassedelements of social justice, considerations of scale,and sensitivity to environmental impact within it.The concept was often viewed as closely related tothe notion of ecotourism—although this form oftourism seemed to be more socially prescribed (e.g.,travel in small groups, interact with indigenouspeople, income benefits the resource, eat healthyfoods, etc.) while sustainable tourism seemed to bemore concerned with the outcomes of a viabletourism industry. In this respect, sustainable tourismwas often viewed as the domain of small business,and it was opposed to larger scale, more ‘mass’oriented forms of tourism. But the notion ofsustainable tourism was also grasped by individualfirms and destination marketing organizations tomean how a firm can be longer lasting.

Triggered by the fusing of these two stories,thousands of scientific articles have been producedaddressing ‘sustainable tourism’, particularly inrural settings located within lesser developedcountries and emerging economies. Typically, thesestudies and projects focus on elements of communityengagement in tourism decisions, development ofsmall craft and guiding businesses, exhibiting

documentary, Silent Spring), and because of thescale of international aid projects, these anxietieswere also translated to that mode of development.A second stream dealt with the notion of quality oflife, that measures of a society’s well-being wereoften ignored by economic based quantitativemeasures such as gross domestic product. In thisstream, access to education, healthcare, rights ofminorities and women became a central focus ofmany activist movements. A third streamencompassed governance, with an increasingconsideration focused on the rights of peopleimpacted by various governmental decisions to beengaged in the decision-making process and typifiedby demands for transparency, accountability andinclusiveness.

These streams were initially joined in the 1972UN Stockholm Conference on the Environment.Most importantly, in 1983 the UN formed a WorldCommission on Environment and Development(informally called the ‘Brundtland’ Commissionafter the chair Bro Brundtland) which eloquentlyarticulated the integrated character of these threadsin its concluding report, ‘Our Common Future’. TheCommission had been chartered to study howdevelopment could proceed that would deal withpoverty, rates of resource degradation andconsumption, and larger scale environmentalissues.

While the notion of sustainable developmenthad begun to surface prior to the BrundtlandCommission report, it was this narrative thatcrystallized global interest in a new approach todevelopment. The Commission defined sustainabledevelopment as ‘development that meets the needsof the present without compromising the ability offuture generations to meet their own needs’. Whilethis statement seems rather straight forward, it hasbeen debated ever since the report was publishedraising both operational and systemic level ofskepticisms: How can development be sustainable?Are the interests and preferences of the currentgeneration and future generations similar? Whatare needs? What are desires? What is it that weshould be sustaining?

The report was perfectly timed to stimulate



traditional events, customs and festivals, providingincome to residents of rural communities, and insome cases raising income to support managementof resources at the basis of nature-based tourismoperations. For example, the UNWTO programme,Sustainable Tourism-Elimination of Poverty1

focuses almost exclusively on raising income inpoverty stricken areas through a variety of initiativesusing seven ‘mechanisms’ designed to improvecommunity capabilities in the tourism arena.

Sustainable tourism conceived of as acommunity level intervention contains thecharacteristics of a ‘social trap’. A social trap occurswhenever ‘road signs’ or cues to appropriatebehaviour in the short-run lead to a situation that isdetrimental in the long-run or inconsistent with theneeds of the larger social system (Costanza 1987;Platt 1973). For example, the initial positive feedbackof a newly introduced tourism business may in thelong run challenge traditional economic andpolitical power in a community leading to conflict.Colin Hunter (1995) makes this point when hecriticizes the sustainable tourism developmentparadigm as parochial, unwittingly focusing effortson too narrow a pathway: ‘…the dominant tourism-centric paradigm encourages and/or causes aninherent and inappropriate limitation of the remit[scope] of sustainable tourism, and that analternative extraparochial paradigm is a moresuitable conceptual vehicle’ for sustainable tourismpolicy. Hunter’s point is that our efforts to developsustainable tourism in the short-run may ignoreother important dimensions of sustainabledevelopment and that we can inadvertentlynegatively impact other sectors in the long-run.

Re-characterizing the World

Our century differs from the context, andtherefore the fundamental assumptions whichspiced ‘how we viewed the world within which thesustainable tourism concept evolved’. We recognize,more so than in the early 1990s that the implicitassumptions we hold about the world influence ourbehaviour. The rise of systems thinking2 (see Senge1990 for example) together with the recognition thatthe mental models we carry around influence ourbehaviour (and even the evidence we may see in

scientific exploration) and the increasinglyacrimonious debate about tourism developmentsuggests that a critical examination of sustainabletourism concept is in order. Mental models are oursimplified representations of reality that help uswork through the complexities of not only everydayliving but also the grueling problems of development,poverty alleviation and environmental protection.Mental models are frequently influenced by oursuccesses of the past, and so strongly held theyserve as barriers to seeing evidence that challengesthose representations.

Conventional sustainable tourism mentalmodels of the late 20th century were constructed outof modernist and postmodernist assumptions thatthe world is predictable, linear, ultimatelyunderstandable and basically stable. This view ofthe world resulted in complex problems beingreduced to ‘digestable’ parts, with ‘solutions’ to eachcomponent developed. After solutions for eachproblem component were found, then componentswere put back together for a more ‘comprehensive’solution. These solutions often become the panaceasthat Ostrom (2007) critiqued in her insightful essay‘Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems: AnImpossibility?’

This reductionism produced policies anddevelopment activity that focus on interventions incommunities in one particular sector—tourism inthis case—with little understanding of the broaderscale consequences, both positive and negative,resulting. For example, tourism interventions havebeen criticized as insensitive to indigenouscommunity cultural norms and values, in othercases as producing low quality jobs, and in stillothers leading to unacceptable environmentalimpacts. Communities—even small ones—areincredibly diverse, in terms of norms, affluence,political power, access to education and health care,type of job and so on. Focusing on tourism as anintervention without a broad understanding of theentire system will likely lead to some stresses andstrains that one could argue negate the benefit ofenhanced income for some. In this sense, thesolution, sustainable tourism, becomes the problem.

Further, it is unclear how one would measure



and assess whether a sustainable tourism initiativewas successful and why: interventions oftendisplay confusion between inputs and outcomes,and the spatial, temporal and social-organizationalscales are often unstated. Implementing anintervention might look good for a governmentprogramme or to an NGO’s donors, but how do weknow it worked? For whom did it work? Whobenefited? Who did not? Why? Further, a focus onsustainable tourism as small-scale businesses orcommunity tourism initiatives ignores both the ideaof reducing the negative consequences of all tourismin general and how tourism development integratesinto the larger economy of a village or region. In onesense, the goal of sustainable tourism has been toensure economic stability, particularly at thecommunity level—a goal difficult to achieve in aworld of globalized financial institutions andprocesses.

Overly simplistic models and panaceas—suchas finding the intersection of ecological sensitivity,economic feasibility and cultural acceptability—aredeceptive. It is unlikely that economic,environmental and social acceptability concerns canbe valued equally in sustainability discussions bydifferent groups. How do constituencies differ intheir preferences? Why? What about constituenciesnot yet alive—those generations the BrundtlandCommission speaks to? Economic feasibility is sodependent on short-term market and financialconditions as to be counter to the long-term notionof sustainability as intergenerational equity. Socialacceptability varies significantly across cultures andeven within small communities, so we are confrontedwith the question of: acceptable for whom? Thereare no clear, technically based guidelines foranswering this question. Dryzek (1987) argues inthis context that social choices must be firstecologically rational, for if we lose the environmentalbasis for human life, there is no future for otherconsiderations. One could argue that the illusion ofachieving sustainability (through excessivelyreductionist approaches) may be its mostfundamental obstacle.

We have now begun to realize that a new setof assumptions about the world would advance ouropportunities to learn and produce insights more

beneficial to tourism decision-making. First, weunderstand that the world is dynamically complex,that is, the world changes in a non-linear ratherthan incremental manner, that small changes in onevariable may lead to large changes in another. Thishas been popularized by the term ‘the butterflyeffect’. Second, for all practical purposes, the worldis impossible to completely understand, that is, therewill never be enough data or science to completelyexplain the causes and consequences of events,patterns and structures. Third, the world is ever-changing, by this I mean that we can always expectsurprises, that because knowledge is tentative andincomplete, unpredicted consequences will likelyarise in places and at times we are least likely toexpect. Finally, the world is connected as a giantcomplex adaptive social-ecological system, thatnumerous drivers and forces acting at the globallevel influence the effectiveness, usefulness andappropriateness of economic development actionsat the local level. Such drivers include changingmodels of governance, population dynamics (e.g.,growth, aging, migration), technologicaladvancement, economic restructuring, climatechange, and so on.

Such systems are comprised of various actors,actions, resources, relationships and influences(Andereis et al. 2004)3; they are subject to a varietyof internally and exogenously inducedperturbations; and they contain propertiescharacterizing the whole in addition to theirconstituent parts. Relationships between causes andconsequences are often mediated by a number oflinkages, which means that cause-effectrelationships are loosely rather than tightly coupled.Temporal delays between actions and effects maybe long: actions taken by an entity may lead to effectsthousands of kilometers distant. Interactions amongdifferent scales are typical. Problems apparently‘solved’ in one location may be simply, andsometimes carelessly, displaced to some other place,sometimes with less capacity to address thoseproblems.

A systems lens holds a number ofconsequences, most notably an improvedunderstanding of the notion of uncertainty, that thefuture is no longer a linear progression of the past;



Figure 2. A Social-ecological System may beConceived of as a Basin, with the Condition at

Any One Time Represented by the Ball.

that use of systems thinking, particularlyconceptualizing tourism as one component of asocial ecological system, helps managers,practitioners and academics think more holisticallyabout tourism; and that interests, while they vie andcompete for attention and resources, may be betteroff building linkages, partnerships and relationalcapital (Nkhata et al. 2008) to secure progress in theface of contention, complexity, uncertainty andchange.

Complex social-ecological systems are alsocharacterized as containing emergent properties—attributes of the whole which cannot be predictedfrom understanding the parts. Just as anunderstanding of the biology of brain cells does notpredict personality of a person, developing new andsmall tourism businesses may not predict thesustainability of the system as a whole or its abilityto adaptive to the inherent turbulence of 21st centuryearth. In this sense, assumptions about thehomogeneity of small villages implicit in manydevelopment initiatives are often exposed by rancor,jealousies and conflict introduced by the perceivedinequities in resulting incomes and opportunities.

From Sustainability to Resiliency: Redefining theRole of Tourism

This social-ecological system can be conceivedof as a shallow basin, a metaphor presented byWalker and Salt (2006). The forces and couplingsthat exist both external to the system and within itdefine its shape and depth. The basin defines theset of possible states that a social-ecological systemmay have and still retain its structure and function.At any given point in time, the system will be in aparticular state (see Figure 2 for depictions of thebasin) represented by a ball. The basin shape anddepth indicate the range of variability that normallyoccurs, and as long as the ball remains within thebasin, any potential conditions could be describedas ‘normal’. People dependent upon the social-ecological system for services and benefits havedeveloped strategies to adapt to changingconditions within this basin. In a very real sense, aslong as the ball remains within the basin, the systemhas achieved a position of sustainability eventhough there is some variability.

However, perturbations (natural disasters,armed conflict, World Bank policies, NGOdevelopment initiatives, a new tourism business)may ‘tilt’ the basin, thus changing the range ofconditions possible and raising the probability thatthe ball may fall out of the basin into an adjacentone, which may have very different characteristics.In this situation, the system becomes a ‘different’one, with dissimilar structures and functions, withpotentially an altered mix of ecosystem-basedservices, social conditions, economic arrangements,political priorities and power relationships. Thiswould place the ball into a different situation andincrease risks to those have come to depend uponthe relationships, resources and structures providedin the original basin.

Given the large amount of uncertainty in theworld, a goal then of managing complex socialecological systems would be to enhance theirresilience in the face of disturbances, whether theyare caused internally or by larger scale forces, suchas demands for economic restructuring, global

Note: Any time the ball is within the basin, the system maybe characterized as within the normal range of variability, asdepicted in (a). At times, perturbating forces (climate change,political upheaval, economic restructuring) may move theball to the edge of the basin (b). If a social-ecological systemhas little resilience, the ball may fall into another basin (c)characterized by a different set of economic, political, culturalor environmental conditions, putting at risk the people livingthere. Suggested by Walker and Salt (2006)



business competition, shifting tourism markets orclimate change. The Resilience Alliance definesresilience as ‘the ability to absorb disturbances, tobe changed and then to re-organize and still havethe same identity (retain the same basic structureand ways of functioning). It includes the ability tolearn from the disturbance. A resilient system isforgiving of external shocks. As resilience declinesthe magnitude of a shock from which it cannotrecover gets smaller and smaller.’4

Low income and emerging economies havelittle resilience when it comes to disturbancesinduced from forces and decisions exogenous5 tothe system (such as failures in global financialsystems, demands for economic restructuring,climate change) with which culture and politicshave become accustomed. In the area ofconservation, for example, international demandsfor more natural areas in protected status impose anew land use regime and may restrict access tonatural resources upon which communities havetraditionally been dependent. Without analternative livelihood available, residents may dropinto deeper poverty. Revenues from small scale‘sustainable’ tourism to these areas are oftenproposed as ways of compensation, but one has towonder whether this helps the local community bemore resilient or simply shift dependencies.

In terms of development, we can alternativelyframe tourism as an intervention (which holdseconomic, social, cultural and political dimensions)used to enhance the system’s resilience. In soframing tourism in this way, we avoid prescriptivejudgments concerning scale of the tourismdevelopment (sometimes ‘big’ might be appropriateand effective), we focus on what the interventionwill do to enhance the ability of the social-ecologicalsystem to confront and respond to disturbances, andwe may come up with innovative developmentinitiatives that place prominence on learning. Thisforces those who propose tourism (or any othereconomic activity for that matter) to consider whatelements of the system need strengthening toenhance resilience, to better understand not onlythe system itself (and the various relationshipswithin it), but also what potential threats exist thatmight put the system at risk. It requires NGOs and

government entities that are charged with economicdevelopment programmes to conduct analyses ofthe system to better understand what interventionsmay be most effective in enhancing system resilience.These analyses might even find that the biggestthreat to system resilience arises from internationalinstitutions whose goal is just the opposite!

This view of sustainable tourism turns thequestion from one of how to sustain tourism activityto one of what it is that tourism should sustain, andprovides a response grounded in a morecontemporary mental model of the world, one thatarguably inspires more useful insights than the oneof the past. Sustainable tourism in this sense is nota type or physical scale of business, rather it is astrategy to build or maintain system resilience. It isbuilt upon a mental model of the world and tourismsignificantly different than what has been used inthe past. Several other authors have argued forusing a mental model of tourism developmentconstructed on the notion of complex social-ecological systems (most notably Jamal 2012;Strickland-Munroe et al. 2010; Plummer 2009; Farrelland Twining-Ward 2004; Saarinen 2006). But it isnow time to take these proposals more seriously.

Conclusion

The concept of sustainable tourism has fueledmany experiments in thinking differently about howthe experiences visitors seek can be provided, howsociety can benefit from this demand and how theenvironment may be protected as a result of tourismdevelopment. And in that sense, the notion ofsustainable tourism encourages innovative thinkingthat has had positive results in many situations.But the insular focus on tourism in isolation to othereconomic alternatives and the lack ofacknowledgement of tourism as one component ofa complex social-ecological system impracticallyand theoretically compartmentalizes the practice ofsustainable tourism. In a century typified by almostcomplete integration of global, regional and locallevel processes, events, and patterns, such a narrowprescription of sustainable tourism creates anillusion of success that has become its largest barrieras an effective, salient path to more vibrant andresilient communities. Too, a narrow framing of



sustainable tourism places limits on the types ofquestions we may know to ask.

The principal question facing tourism in the21st century is the extent to which it can contributeto the resilience of communities in this era ofintegration and globalization. Such contributionmay come in the form of labour income—allowinglocal residents for example to purchase sustenanceand shelter, to participate in education, and to accesshealth programmes; it may come in the form of theenhanced problem-solving and critical thinkingskills needed to work through complicated socialissues, challenges and opportunities; or it may helpbroaden the adaptation alternatives needed toaddress threats from a variety of exogenous andinternal disturbing forces.

In this sense, sustainable tourism is fixatedmore on building and retaining desiredcharacteristics of a system—such as a localcommunity—than on the scale of an individualbusiness or ensuring the business survives for aperiod of time. By conceiving tourism as onecomponent of a complex system, we change thecharacter of the questions asked and by that processgenerate responses, develop initiatives and conductresearch not previously considered. These activitiesadvance our learning and by so doing, move thenotion of sustainable tourism into greater saliency.

And yet, there remain significant questionsabout the capacities needed to think in resilienceterms. What capacities at the institutional,entrepreunerial and individual scales are needed?How do we develop them? How can scientists joinwith activists, NGOs and government in changingour thinking? Is it even realistic to considersustainable tourism as a path to resilience, or is itsimply another in a long list of buzzwords?

Endnotes

1. See http://step.unwto.org/en/content/background-and-objectives for a fulldescription of the programme.

2. Loosely defined here as the study of how partsof the whole influence each other.

3. A social-ecological system is defined byAndereis et al. as “an ecological systemintricately linked with and affected by one ormore social systems.”

4. http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/key_concepts – Accessed on 18 October 2012.

5. I am reluctant to use this concept as I agreewith John Sterman’s (2002) admonition that‘almost nothing is exogenous.’ I use it only forthe sake of the argument.

Sustainable Tourism – The Undefinable andUnachievable Pursued by the Unrealistic?

RICHARD BUTLER

In the lead probe McCool notes that his essay‘is impressionistic… (and)…a bit provocative’, forwhich I am most grateful, as it surely allows therespondents to be equally personal and responsive,drawing on their own backgrounds and experiencein tourism research. I write therefore, in a personalvein, as an individual trained in geography andwho has taught tourism (and resource

management) for several decades from thatperspective. A geographical training at the time ofmy education involved an understanding ofphysical and human processes and their interaction.Because of this, almost all those of my ilk have anunderstanding of how pathetic our humanresponses often are to the overpowering forces ofnatural processes, and how many problems we



cause because of our refusal to consider what shouldbe basic common sense when dealing with thenatural environment. No better elucidation of sucha viewpoint exists than the late Ian McHarg’smasterpiece, Design with Nature (1967) and his query,on viewing the first photographs of the earth fromspace, whether mankind was a planetary disease,given that it was responsible for the analogousbrown and black ‘bruises’ on the green ‘apple’ ofthe earth. I am, therefore, a strong proponent of theprinciples behind the concept of sustainabledevelopment, while remaining an equally strongsceptic of the concept as generally used, misusedand promoted by some of its more publicity-seekingsupporters.

In choosing the title of my response Iacknowledge Oscar Wilde (1893 cited in Wilde1996), who defined fox hunting as ‘the unspeakablein full pursuit of the uneatable’, as sustainabletourism seems to me to be rather like that oftmaligned recreation activity. The latter is generallycondemned not because of its purpose (to kill foxes),but because it gives its participants (except the fox)enjoyment. In the same way sustainable tourism,which is surely both a fiction and a smoke screen,gives encouragement (enjoyment) to its supportersand frustration to those who genuinely understandand desire the concept to be implemented. To discussit and respond to the lead of McCool is bothfrustrating and enjoyable, and, again withacknowledgement to Wilde (1895, cited in Wilde1990) ‘On an occasion of this kind it becomes morethan a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes apleasure’.

McCool provides a good brief introduction tothe concept of sustainable development, a creationacknowledged by Buckley in response as a politicaltool to direct public attention. The vagueness whichBuckley refers to and the failure of implementationnoted by McCool are key features of what is perhapsthe ultimate ‘apple pie and motherhood’ statementof the last century. Precisely because sustainabledevelopment (and its off-spring sustainabletourism) is vague, proponents of the concept havebeen able to garner support from an incredibly widerange of viewpoints, including inevitably politicianswho dote on such slogans and phrases which are

both generalizations and appealing to such a rangeof views. The support of politicians is, of course,critical to the popularization of any innovation,although equally, such innovations are not normallyadopted by politicians until they are popular. Thedistinguishing achievement of sustainabledevelopment is that it has achieved an almostmythical state of approval that has lasted for aquarter of a century, garnering support from mostsides of the political spectrum.

One might well ask why this has come about.The idea of responsible behaviour, conservation forexample, was popular at the beginning of the 20th

century. A good example is the discussion andcontroversy that took place over the proposeddevelopment of dams and water diversions inYosemite National Park. The ensuing argumentssaw a fascinating debate between proponents ofconservation (the wise use of resources as expressedby Gifford Pinchot) and preservation (the non-useand protection of resources as argued by John Muirand others) which still resounds today in manyforms (Nelson and Butler 1974). The debate waskindled anew in the second half of the 20th centuryfollowing Rachel Carson’s (1963) seminal work(Silent Spring) and other publications such asMeadows et al’s (1972) Limits to Growth. In the titleof the latter, however, is its great weakness, the word“limits” in the context of growth, a view point whichfew developers would not find acceptable and ofwhich politicians would totally avoid mention. Thegreat success of sustainable development was thatit appears to allow growth (development) and couldthus meet everyone’s self-focused goals. At the timeof writing (late 2012), there is hardly a governmentin the world which is not pursuing growth followingthe depression and recession of the past few years.‘Shoots’ of growth, ideally green ones , but in realityof any colour, are what are being sought , andpredictions of growth rates of GNP or GDP of ‘only’one or two per cent are generally regarded asunsatisfactory. Whether the desired growth ratesare sustainable or not does not seem to matter atpresent, only whether they will create jobs andwealth at the scale seen some years ago.

Herein lies the rub. Tourism has been one ofthe very few economic activities which has seen



almost perpetual growth over the last half century(little of it sustainable however) as shown byMcCool. Despite wars and recessions, and political,social and economic upheavals, tourism overall hascontinued to grow. Even in the very few years wheninternational tourism arrivals (whatever they reallyare) have not grown, domestic tourism hascontinued to expand and thus tourism as a wholehas become ever larger. Despite this, there hasemerged the fantasy (guiding fiction is really toopolite and flattering a term) of sustainable tourism.If sustainable tourism were to exist in reality, wewould have to understand the needs of the presentas well as the needs of the future. Can we really talkof ‘needs’ in the context of tourism, or the ‘right’ to aholiday when much of the world’s population isunable to afford even a part-day of leisure a week,let alone a holiday away from home any year? Evenif we do accept the need for a holiday or rest andrelaxation for human beings, what do we know ofthe needs of future generations? We do not evenknow what will be the scale, distribution or natureof future generations. In reality most societies cannotaccurately forecast even their total populationstwenty years ahead, let alone their economic, socialand environmental requirements, so no wonder wetalk in terms of generalities and wishful thinking.Sustainability, in tourism or anything, is like truth,‘never pure and rarely simple’ (Wilde 1895 cited inWilde 1990).

It has never failed to both fascinate and annoyme that many of the awards that are given in thevarious competitions for sustainable tourism go tooperations newly established in developingcountries. I have nothing against encouraging newdevelopers in tourism or anything else to adoptsustainable principles, these really should beautomatic and taken for granted in this day andage. While many of such award winners operatetheir establishments in fairly sustainable ways (e.g.,using local produce, local labour, local constructionmaterials, community involvement and support,low energy use, and recycling outputs), which is amarked improvement over most operations in thecountries hosting the awards, there is generally onefatal flaw. That is in the form of transportation, andin particular, access from generally long-haul

markets to the operations involved. Suchtransportation almost inevitably involves non-renewable and non-sustainable fuels, making thewhole tourism experience non-sustainable. Evenwith carbon offsetting the activity does not becomesustainable. Carbon off-setting simply means somecompanies pay to continue emitting carbon, whileothers that would not or cannot emit carbon, getpaid for not doing so, even when they might not bedoing so anyway. As each plane flies, carbon isemitted, whether offset or not. New ‘sustainable’tourism operations do not reduce emissions orreduce tourism’s impacts on the environment unlessplaces offering an equivalent number of bed nightsand involving a similar level of emissions are closeddown. The ill fated efforts in Calvia showed howdifficult such good intentions are to implementsuccessfully for a long period (Dodds 2007). Thusnew operations add to tourism travel, generallylong-haul travel, aggravating the overall problem,not reducing it. While there may well be desiredbenefits to local communities and even some addedprotection of the local environment, such results donot constitute real sustainable tourism butessentially a green and social wash to tourism thatmight not be ‘needed’ and which continues tocontribute to the global overuse of diminishingresources.

The previous discussion should not beinterpreted as an anti-tourism diatribe. I regard theglobal development of tourism to be a considerableachievement in social and economic terms, even ifan ever increasing problem from an environmentalperspective. To have so many people able toexperience travel and enjoy (despite what someacademic critics of mass tourism would argue) theexperience is a great advance in human well-being.It should not be dismissed because it involvesenjoyment, pleasure and freedom of choice, andparticularly not dismissed because it involves anincreasing proportion (until recently) of lowerincome earners whose tastes and preferences do notmatch those of travel writers and tourism academicsin general. Academics involved in tourism researchperhaps should be more appreciative of theemployment generated by tourism, of improvementsin transportation and other services in what were



remote and poorly served areas of the world ratherthan focusing on and criticizing the disappearanceof ways of life that condemned many people topoverty and subsistence at very low levels. It wouldbe nice and better perhaps if all tourism was ‘fairtrade’ tourism, if wage levels in third world tourismoperations were equal to those in developedcountries and if local communities had control overall operations and divided profits equally and fairly,but if we are honest, such a situation is highlyunlikely to exist in any form of economic activity inmany countries and the cost of such tourism wouldinevitably be beyond the means of most tourists,resulting in a reduction in numbers, in income andemployment generation and financial viability.

We tend to describe sustainable developmentand thus sustainable tourism as having a triplebottom line, meaning that economic, social andenvironmental considerations should be equal inimportance when decisions are made. There are twoproblems with such an assumption. One is thatwithout economic viability the other two elementsbecome irrelevant because tourism will not takeplace, or if it does, it will be short-lived because itwill not make a return on investment and thus willnot be sustainable economically. The second, andmore serious, error in the assumption is that it is atriple bottom line. In reality it is a quadruple bottomline with the fourth element being politics (Figure1). However economically positive, sociallywelcomed, and environmentally benign adevelopment may be, it will not proceed to operationunless it is politically acceptable. Political in this

context ranges from the national level down to mostlocal grass roots level. Sofield (1996) illustrated howlocal opposition can effectively prevent tourismdevelopment from being successful and the with-holding of planning or development permission atvarious higher levels of government can denydevelopment for a range of reasons, both honourableand corrupt. If we ignore this fourth and most criticalelement when discussing sustainable tourism, weignore reality.

We (academic researchers) need to be honestin our appraisal of tourism, and what passes forsustainable tourism in particular. The concept, likeits related concept of ecotourism, has becomedistorted, expanded, politicized and changedbeyond general recognition from what may havebeen implied in the Brundtland Report (WCED1987). I say implied because of course, there isnothing about tourism in Our Common Future. Somuch for what many people think (or more likelyfail to think) about the subject that drives ouracademic output. Sustainable tourism is now seenas key to helping solve climate change, or so somepublications would have us believe (Ceron andDubois 2009; Gossling and Hall 2006). I have nodoubts about climate change (although I do havesome doubts about the causes and the predictionsmade about the subject) but I cannot accept thatsustainable tourism will make more than a veryslight difference to the continuation of climatechange and the problems which it entails. As longas travellers for pleasure use non-renewable energy,tourism will continue to influence climate change(not by much compared to other factors, but certainlyto a degree). The greenhouse gas emission reductionfrom building more sustainable eco-lodges inAmazonia, South East Asia or western Europe willbe undetectably small, but that is where major effortis likely to be put judging from what is being writtengenerally. The saving from making one majordestination such as Las Vegas even 10 per cent moresustainable or perhaps, more accurately, byreducing energy consumption in Las Vegas by 10per cent, would have a far greater effect on reducinggreenhouse gas emissions than the creation of newtourism facilities anywhere , particularly those fardistant from their primary markets. RetrofittingSource: Author

Figure 1. Quadruple Bottom Line Model



existing destinations rather than encouraging newdevelopment would be much more effective,although still of minor value, in reducing emissionsglobally.

Yet that, of course, would not be popular as itwould involve few positive headlines, added coststo existing operators, reduced appeal perhaps topotential visitors and still allow mass tourism ofthe most blatant (and academically unpopular)forms. Might we ever move from the ‘guiding fiction’of McCool to reality? Perhaps, but if we are to makesuch a step certain issues must be faced. The mosteffective way to become more sustainable, in tourismas in everything else, is to involve fewer people. Thusany serious attempt to achieve sustainability at theglobal level has to include population reduction,not just control. China’s one child policy, anthemiathough it might be to some liberal thinkers andothers, has probably done more for globalsustainability than anything to date. The failure tosignificantly reduce population growth, for examplein India and in Africa, confirms the unwillingnessof governments and societies to grasp the nettle ofreal sustainability. A reduction in consumptionstems from either a reduction in demand or insupply, or both. The basic cause of increasingdemand is increasing population, and this,combined with decreasing supply in terms of energy,food and potable water, will result in horrors on ascale not yet experienced. Compared to this tourism,sustainable or otherwise is really an irrelevancy.Are we talking about sustainable tourism out of areal sense that this is important, or simply to impresson others that tourism researchers also want indiscussions on sustainable development, and mostlately, climate change discussions also?

Making tourism more sustainable is relativelysimple in theory, namely, reduce the numbers ofpeople travelling for tourism. One senses that forsome, lower numbers of the ‘right type’ of touristsare what is needed, travellers (not tourists of course)willing to spend large amounts of money, bothbecause prices would be high and conscienceswould be pricked, for very basic facilities, stayingfor long periods of time, doing very little, andpresumably travelling by train or sailing vessel. In

reality, this is a combination of pipe dreaming andwishful thinking, as well as being elitist andcondemning millions of those on lower incomes fromengaging in tourism, or at least internationaltourism. An alternative, and surely a more attractiveone, is to make participants in tourism realize that amore sustainable form of tourism can and shouldbe economically rewarding. Accommodationestablishments operating in a sustainable mannershould surely reduce expenditure on energy andperhaps on other utilities such as water if this werecharged at its real value over the long-term, if notthe medium- and even short-term as well. Utilizinglocal produce should also see reduced expenditureby savings on ever increasing energy costs for thetransportation of food stuffs, and increasedinvestment in local production should raisestandards and reliability. At present, however, thereverse seems to be true. The few sustainableholidays that are offered are generally more, not less,expensive, implying either that operators are tryingto recoup investment in sustainable features rapidlyand/or are ripping off customers who are assuagingtheir consciences by ‘going green’. Taking a long-term view is one of the key elements of sustainabledevelopment, but one that seems to be low on thescale of importance for many operators.

The long-term future for tourism clearly facesproblems. While peak oil may be much further awaythan is often threatened, long-haul tourism frommajor markets to destinations may well besignificantly reduced in the years ahead, butsustainable tourism is hardly the answer. It isincapable of greatly affecting world energy suppliesor climate change and is therefore, like tourism as awhole, a bit player in the world’s future. That doesnot mean those involved in tourism should continueto do little other than sign up for the ‘guiding fiction’(a term McCool first applied to carrying capacity if Irecall correctly, which is not too different a conceptto sustainability) and espouse unlikely ideals.Rather they should promote and practice the generalprinciples behind sustainable development andthus sustainable tourism, concentrating more on thefundamental elements than on later additions suchas political correctness and the ‘small is beautiful’ideas of latter day hippies. Taking care of the big



issues will allow the luxury later of attending toother desirable but less essential details later.Ignoring the big issues will ultimately mean thatthere will be no tourism to bother about, sustainableor not. Or, as Wilde yet again almost noted ‘we shallhave to die beyond our means’ (Sherard 1906).

In short, and to conclude, sustainability is tooimportant a path to be taken lightly or left toacademics or worse, politicians or entrepreneurs. Itdeals with the well-being of the planet, not just itsenvironment but the social and economic structureson which its inhabitants depend. Compared tosecurity, shelter, food and water and the otherelements noted by Maslow (1943), tourism isrelatively unimportant, yet it is what those reading

these probes are concerned with. It is time, perhaps,that we dropped the management speak of conceptsthat are not blindingly new ideas but mostlydeliberately complicated reiterations of basiccommon sense, such as ‘adaptive management’,‘resilience’ or ‘critical thinking’. It is hard to seesustainable development as anything other thanconservation, ‘the wise use of resources’,acknowledging that some of those resources will beexhausted over time, some should be protected andpreserved and the rest used with a long-term viewfor the greatest good for the longest time. If you thinkthat is wishful thinking, it probably is, but sometimesdreams come true, and survival has long beenmankind’s ultimate fantasy.

Tourism and the Sustainability of Human Societies

RALF BUCKLEY

The Brundtland definition of sustainabledevelopment, as cited by McCool in his lead probeSustainable Tourism: Guiding Fiction, Social Trap orPath to Resilience? was a political one. In politicalterms it did serve a useful purpose, directing publicattention to increasing shortages of naturalresources. At the same time, however, it createdcontinuing problems through its vagueness. Asnoted by McCool, it rallied social discourse but failedthe specifics of implementation.

From a scientific perspective, the Brundtlandformulation is paradoxical, and ultimately eithermeaningless or impossible. One of the most stronglyfelt ‘needs’ of the current generation is to producechildren, and one of the ‘needs’ of future generationsis to produce even more children, and so the planet’shuman population increases, and its ability to meetother human needs such as food, water and airsupplies decreases. By expressing sustainability interms of what humans think they need, rather thanhow the planet actually works, the Brundtlanddefinition gained political acceptability, but at thecost of technical feasibility.

Therefore there have been many attempts totranslate sustainability into more useful technicalterms. Economists speak of weak and strongsustainability, natural and human capital; but theseignore fundamentals. It is easy to buy and sellcomponents of nature whilst they exist; butexpensive, difficult or impossible to replace them,and their functions, when they are gone. Socialscientists aim to express sustainability in terms ofhuman rights and equity. These are indeedimportant to the individual people concerned, butnot fundamental to the functioning of planetaryecosystems.

A sustainable future is technically possible,because individual people have limited life spans.If everyone were to have fewer children, use lessstuff and make less mess, we could hope for a softlanding from our current unsustainable path. Butthis would require simultaneous individualdecisions by billions of people, to sacrifice theirpersonal interests to the general good. This isvanishingly improbable. Therefore, there are twoprincipal possibilities (Buckley 2012a). The more



optimistic is that current political, economic andsocial system will very quickly be able to developsuitable incentives, whether carrots or sticks, topersuade people to make these sacrificesnonetheless. The more pessimistic is that humanpopulation, consumption and waste generation willcontinue to increase until catastrophic famine,disease and associated wars cause a suddenmassive collapse. Neither path is likely to be easy.

This provides the context for considering thesustainability of tourism specifically. Right now,tourism is a global industry worth somewhere uptoseven trillion dollars a year, depending what youcount and whose statistics you believe. That’s athousand dollars for everyone on earth, so it is notnegligible. But it depends on people taking holidaysand travelling. Those things may both disappear.In a more heavily populated and resource-consuming future, tourism is still likely to be a ratherweak player relative to the primary industries,manufacturing, health and military sectors.

I have argued elsewhere (Buckley 2012a) thatwe can assess the sustainability (or otherwise) oftourism through its contributions to five global-scalesocial processes, summarized as: population, peace,prosperity, pollution and protection. Populationeffects are apparently negligible. We hope thattourism contributes to peace, but nobody knows forsure. It does often contribute to local and nationalprosperity, with consequent secondary impacts,both good and bad, on both natural and socialenvironments. It generates pollution, ranging fromlocal waste and wastewater to global atmosphericeffects (Gossling 2010; Gossling et al. 2012). Muchof the technical practicality of sustainability at thescale of individual tourism enterprises is aboutmanaging pollution and other environmentalimpacts (Buckley 2009a, 2011).

There are indeed many commercial tourismenterprises which have taken steps to minimize theirenvironmental impacts. The reasons may range fromsimple compliance with enforceable legislation, topersonal concern and convictions on the part ofowners and managers. Between these lie a widerange of mixed motivations, considered broadlyunder the heading of CSR, corporate social

responsibility (Buckley and Pegas 2012). The scales,types and intensities, of environmental impacts, aswell as the potential mechanisms to reduce them,differ greatly between subsectors and individualenterprises, and also depend upon the timescaleconsidered.

In the longer-term, for example, an airlinemight replace its aircraft with more fuel-efficientdesigns, as these become available through advancesin engineering. In the medium-term, it might changeits routes, but these depend on negotiation oflanding rights and airline partnerships. In the short-term it can reduce impacts per passenger by keepingits planes full. If this involves getting more peopleto fly as a result of successful marketing strategies,however, then that actually increases aggregateimpacts and reduces sustainability. Similarconsiderations apply for hotels. In the long-term themost critical question for sustainability is when,where and whether new hotels are built. In themedium-term, existing hotels can use bothtechnological and management measures to achievelimited reductions in water, energy and resourceconsumption, and generation of wastes. If these aremeasured per bed night, however, then they canclaim improvements simply by filling more beds onmore nights, through pricing and marketingstrategies. This is good for business, but in terms ofglobal sustainability, more business means moreimpacts. Prosperity brings improved humanmaterial wellbeing, but at the cost of consuming anddegrading natural resources and environment(Buckley 2012a).

At a global scale, economic growth has alwaysbeen associated with reduced sustainability. Wehave very few historical examples of economicslowdowns in the modern economy with its highlymechanized primary, secondary and tertiaryindustry sectors. The only examples we have arethose of global recessions, and these have indeedslowed the otherwise relentless growth in resourceconsumption. At regional scale, economic growthcan sometimes improve regional sustainability, if itoccurs through a transition between differentindustry sectors (Buckley 2012a); but suchtransitions occur through geographical shifts inconcentrations of highest-impact sectors, so this



improvement is regional, not global. There are alsoexamples where regional economic contractionshave reduced sustainability, through abandonmentof highly-polluting mines and manufacturingenterprises without rehabilitation. Technologies toreduce so-called environmental intensity, theenvironmental impacts per unit value of production,can indeed show continual improvements; but suchimprovements are only adopted by some enterprisesin some countries, and they are swamped by theoverall growth in the aggregate scale of production.

Trends in greenhouse gas emissions by theairline industry, or water consumption by the globalhotel industry, provide excellent examples(Gossling 2010; Gossling et al. 2012). There havebeen significant improvements in the energyefficiency of aircraft engines and fuselages, but ataggregate global scale, such savings are dwarfedby the continuing growth in air travel; and attemptsto mitigate climate change impacts of air travelthrough voluntary customer purchases of carbonoffsets are ineffective because of low take-up anddubious validity (Gossling 2010; Buckley 2012a).Similar considerations apply for energy- and water-saving appliances in hotels. These can indeedreduce consumption of resources per bed night, butthe global growth in bed nights associated with theoverall growth in tourism means that aggregateconsumption and impacts continue to climb.

At the scale of individual enterprises,irrespective of motivations (Buckley and Pegas2012), installing resource-efficient and low-wastetechnologies can indeed reduce impacts. As long asa hotel continues operating in the same place, withthe same number of beds and the same occupancyrate, then such technologies can indeed reduce itsaggregate on-site impacts. If every other aspect of itscustomer and resource supply chains remainunaltered, then such improvements may contributeto improved global sustainability. If its marketschange, however, so that customers arrive from newsource areas, or use different modes of transport, orstay a different number of nights, then at globalscale, these customer supply-chain effects canoutweigh any on-site improvements calculated perbed night. Similar effects apply if its resource supplychains alter.

For individual tourism enterprises, differentaspects of impacts on global sustainability are undervery different levels of control. For any fixed-sitetourist accommodation or attraction, as noted above,one of the single largest overall impacts is travel tothe site by customers. This is under a certain degreeof control by the destination enterprise, since it isinfluenced by marketing. Few tourism enterprises,however, can afford to target their marketing to localsources solely to reduce travel impacts. They arecompeting with other enterprises, and they have tomaintain demand in order to keep prices above costsand maintain financial viability. This paradox israrely even mentioned within the tourism industry.Even those destinations and enterprises whichmarket themselves as ecotourism, rarely refer to theenvironmental costs of travel (Gossling 2002;Simmons and Becken 2004). Indeed, very fewcommercial tourism enterprises are prepared toreveal the origins of their clienteles (Folke et al. 2006).The same applies for those which market themselvesas slow or responsible tourism (Leslie 2012). Similarconsiderations apply to material supply chains.Tourism enterprises, like any other business, buymost of what they need as cheaply as they can. Theymay feature locally sourced food, for example, butonly if it is cheaper, or they think that it will attractmore customers or support higher prices; and onlyif they have a consistent and reliable supply.

At the on-site scale, i.e., once customers andsupplies have arrived, there are indeed manymeasures which commercial tourism enterprisescan and do take to reduce their local environmentalimpacts (Buckley 2011, 2012a). In Africa, forexample, a number of remote wildlife lodges inBotswana have replaced diesel generators withlarge-scale banks of solar panels. At the luxuriousZarafa Lodge operated by Great Plains Conservation(2012), for example, the entire power supply isproduced from a bank of 136 x 205W solar panels,with a battery bank, inverters, and a high-techmonitoring and control systems operated remotelyfrom South Africa, over an internet connection. Thereare similar systems at several Wilderness Safarislodges, notably Kalahari Plains (Ives 2010).

In Chilean Patagonia in South America, theupmarket hotel at Explora Salto Chico (Explora 2012)



provides its entire hot water supply using a high-tech furnace fuelled by sawmill waste. The furnaceoperates at 680oC and consumes 3.5 tonnes ofwoodchips daily, producing hot water at 80oC and~350 kPa pressure. Of course, as acknowledged byExplora, the trucks transporting the woodchips fromthe sawmills run on diesel; and of course, thesawmills consume forest of native Nothofagusspecies. The forest is being logged irrespective oftourism, however; the sawmill waste is burnt in kilnson-site if not used elsewhere; the trucks use a lotless diesel than a large furnace; and fuel oil for afurnace would also have to be trucked it. So the netoutcome is positive for the natural environment,relative to other practicable options available toExplora. Many more examples such as these havebeen documented in textbooks and case-studycompendia (Buckley 2009a, 2010a). Greenwash iswidespread, however, and environmental awardsand ecocertificates are not always reliable (Buckley2012d). There seems to be no substitute for on-siteaudit in person, by experienced independentresearchers.

In addition to reducing local impacts, tourismenterprises can in some cases also make net positivecontributions to the conservation of ecosystems andbiodiversity, including threatened plant and animalspecies. We live in a world where powerfulindustrial organizations want more and morenatural resources, to provide to more and moreconsumers; where governments are increasinglystrapped for cash and beholden to political interests;where the most fundamental of human life supportsystems are increasingly commoditized (Kaufman2012); and where conservation funding is an orderof magnitude less than needed (McCarthy et al.2012). In such a world, tourism is one of the fewpractical tools available to lessen the shortfall infunding for parks and conservation (Buckley 2009b,2010a, b, 2012b; Buckley and Pabla 2012; Buckley etal. 2012; Morrison et al. 2012).

With few exceptions, however, the tourismindustry does not see itself in such a role. In general,tourism contributes to conservation only where it isharnessed by government legal systems, includingfee and tax arrangements (Buckley 2009a,b). Evenfor those exceptional enterprises which voluntarily

practice conservation tourism (Buckley 2010a,2012a, b), commercial viability is a prerequisite forconservation measures, and this depends onsuccessfully outcompeting other enterprises whichlack such interests. In addition, even enterpriseswhich make major local contributions toconservation still rely largely on internationalclients, who generate impacts during their travel tothe site.

As pointed out by McCool in his lead probe,therefore, the world is indeed highly complicatedand highly interconnected. Whether it is adaptivedepends on what one means by that term. To call ita social-ecological system is perhaps anoversimplification. Certainly, what people do to eachother and the rest of the world, depends on socialstructures as well as individual interests. But thesame applies for mosquitoes and nematodes, whichfar outnumber humans. Human social structureshave changed throughout history, and they canchange again. Currently, they differ enormouslybetween countries and cultures, and thosedifferences affect the rest of the world. A person whopays to see live rhinos, tigers or pangolins in thewild has very different impacts from one who paysto consume ground-up rhino horn, tiger penis boneor pangolin soup. And the differences between thosepersons are social, not physiological.

As noted by McCool, we are indeed living inan era of integration and globalization, andsustainability in tourism needs large as well as local-scale approaches. As outlined for a few examplesabove, there are thousands of such practicaltechnicalities in every aspect of tourism, and it isthese technical issues which determine howsustainable, or otherwise, the tourism sector may beor become. As noted by McCool in his essay andBuckley (2012a), a number of academics,consultants and industry associations haveproposed alternative terminologies or paradigmsfor sustainable tourism. It is not clear what thisachieves. Unless some conceptual insight canreduce the number of people, the amount of stuffthey use, or the mess they make, then it does notmake human society, including tourismcomponents, any less unsustainable. The sameapplies to terms such as adaptive management,



which are academic jargon for what people havealways done anyway.

Even a term such as community resilience,suggested by McCool as a key attribute ofsustainable tourism, is perhaps overworked.Historically, some human communities andcivilizations have proved resilient, in the sense ofsurviving for a long time in a single place. Manyothers, however, have vanished. Often this hasoccurred when they exhausted local naturalresources, either through subsistence use orindustrial exploitation. In other cases, they weredestroyed or displaced through wars and invasions.There are also examples of nomadic communitieswhich have proved more resilient than fixed-sitecounterparts, because of a greater ability to adapt tochanging environmental conditions. Theconclusion reached by McCool, therefore, that ‘theprincipal question facing tourism in the 21st centuryis the extent to which it can contribute to theresilience of communities’ deserves closeexamination. I would argue that it is not theprincipal question for the tourism industry, but itindeed is an important question for sustainability.

To me, the principal questions for the tourismindustry seem to be at much larger scales. Theoverriding question, surely, is for how much longerpeople will have the discretionary time andresources to travel for pleasure. In the longer-term,if wars, disease, thirst and famine overtake theplanet, people may just stay home and buy guns. Ifby some miracle we avoid that outcome, it willrequire major changes to human behaviour, andmass-scale holiday travel is likely to be one of thefirst casualties. If it does happen, then there will bemuch larger-scale concerns for sustainability thanthose associated with tourism. At shorter time scales,whilst human societies are still functioning muchas currently, we are likely to see changes to travelpatterns due to increasing fuel costs, initiallyincremental and ultimately a large-scale modechange as air travel becomes largely unaffordable(Buckley 2012c). If fuel costs reduce travel, that willimprove sustainability, though not in a way whichthe travel industry would like.

At more immediate time scales, the biggest

changes to global tourism are perhaps those due toshifts in the relative wealth of nations, with reduceddiscretionary expenditure in Europe and NorthAmerica, and greatly increased travel by newlywealthy citizens of the BRICS nations, most notablythose of China, India and Brazil. If more and moretourism involves Indian, Chinese and Braziliantourists, then one new key issue for sustainabilitywill be the rather large differences, as regardsattitudes and behaviour towards both natural andhuman environments, between these cultures andthose of Europe and North America.

The role of tourism in contributing to theresilience of communities as cited by McCool isindeed significant to sustainability, largely becauselocal community attitudes are commonly critical inconservation. From the perspective of globalsustainability, the single most important linkbetween tourism and environment is surely the useof tourism as a tool to provide financial and politicalsupport for conservation of biodiversity. This comesat an environmental cost, largely that ofinternational air travel and we need to develop betterenvironmental accounting techniques so as tocompare these costs and benefits in ecological ratherthan economic terms (Buckley 2012a). But it seemsto play a critical and increasing role, and one thatgives tourism its greatest claim to contribute tosustainability. Currently, that contribution isderived only from a very few commercial tourismenterprises. But perhaps part of our hoped-forprogress towards sustainability might be a broaderadoption of tourism-funded conservationendeavours.

The bottom line for sustainable tourism is thisthat some tourism businesses do indeed take manycommendable steps to minimize negative impactson both natural and human environments, and asubstantially smaller number take even morecommendable steps to create net positive outcomesfor both (Buckley 2010a; Ives 2010; Great PlainsConservation 2012; Explora 2012). These enterprisesdo indeed deserve recognition. In addition, in somecountries tourism makes significant fundingcontributions to public protected area agencies, withconsequent gains for conservation of somethreatened species (Buckley et al. 2012; Morrison et



al. 2012). The tourism industry as a whole, however,is concerned with growth, not sustainability. Thisis unsurprising: the same applies for businesses inall industry sectors. As academics, however, we havea responsibility to observe, analyse and report

accurately. Therefore, we cannot pretend thatmainstream tourism is in any way sustainable(Buckley 2012a). That would be not only a delusion,but a collusion.

Wither Sustainable Tourism? But First a Good HardLook in the Mirror

DAVID WEAVER

Academic discourses on sustainable tourismare continuing to evolve and challenge establishedideas and paradigms, building on a growing bodyof relevant literature. It can be argued, at thisjuncture, that the energy being injected into thetheoretical or academic discourse needs to bematched by similar inputs into the real worldapplication of this knowledge, and to the monitoringand assessment of same. Such a broadened focus,concurrently, would better justify the publicresources that sustain the academic enterprise intourism studies. Since the tenor of this particularset of probe contributions seems to be especiallyreflective and individualistic, I will continue insimilar vein with some frank, personal, hopefullyprovocative - and self-critical – comments about thestate of play with respect to sustainable tourism,and to the field of tourism studies more broadly,which I have been involved in as a student orprofessor for 36 years.

I agree with the sentiment of McCool, the leadauthor of this probe that new ways of thinking arecalled for to move beyond what I perceive to be animpasse in sustainable tourism discourses.However, I think that this new approach must beformulated at the most fundamental levels of whatit means to be a ‘tourism scholar’, not at the level ofacademic theory or concept within the existingnorms of the academic sub-culture. This is becauseof the gaping and growing chasm between what wewrite and say on one hand, and on the other handthe influence that this material has actually had onthe lived world of tourism. The first observation,based on an exponential increase in journal or book

output as well as increased sophistication inmethods is usually not contested and is taken asgrounds for optimism and a ‘maturation’ of the field(Airey and Tribe 2005). As for the secondobservation, I don’t see much evidence of an impacton industry or government circles that have the mostinfluence on the way tourism develops. Othertourism academics have revealed similar concernsabout this issue of relevance (Pearce 2005). For thosewishing to take issue with this, I would like to seethe evidence of impact. It is surprising to me thatthere are no studies (to my knowledge) that haveattempted to measure the contribution of academicwriting to the real world development of the tourismsector, nor any metrics that would inform such aninvestigation. Perhaps there is realization of whatsuch a study would show…

One illustration of this alleged irrelevance isthe Co-operative Research Centre for SustainableTourism (STCRC), which operated as a federallyand state funded entity in Australia between 1997and 2010. The STCRC held great promise ofdelivering relevant and timely knowledge toindustry through the informed involvement oftourism academics. It did manage to produce animpressive output of reports and academic articlesand book chapters, but there seems to have beenlittle direct effect of this output on the Australiantourism sector despite the investment of tens ofmillions of taxpayers’ dollars over the duration.Again, if I am incorrect about this, then I would verymuch like to be informed about any empirical studiesthat, in the interests of accountability, havedemonstrated the return on investment to the



Australian taxpayer and tourism industry. Anysurveys that have solicited industry and governmentstakeholders as to their awareness and opinion ofthe STCRC as an influence on the sector would alsobe welcomed. In the light of such evidence, I wouldhappily stand corrected, especially if such a studyidentified factors that increased the probability ofmaking a positive impact.

If I am right, then the obvious implication isthat there is something amiss with the academicculture itself, and not just with the theories,frameworks or concepts that derive from that culture.These after all have been frequently rethought, andoften in fundamental ways, but none have had theeffect of narrowing the chasm or helping the sector.So what are we good at? There is the increasingquantity and quality of academic output asmentioned, but this only exacerbates the paradox ofirrelevance, since such output should be having moreof an influence. At most, we can hope that some ofour best empirical research occasionally gains theattention of stakeholders in government or industryand makes a difference. I doubt, however, whetherthis has positive implications for the environmental,sociocultural or economic sustainability ofparticular destinations, since decision-makers inindustry and government are usually guided byconsiderations of financial or political expediency,respectively – industry stakeholders will considerhow knowledge can be mobilized to increase profits,and public sector stakeholders will have to considerhow it facilitates the re-election of the governmentof the day. A reasonable counterargument is thatwe influence industry and government indirectlythrough bright and forward-looking students whogo on to occupy positions of influence in thosesectors. However, disregarding for the moment themismatch between the number of students majoringin tourism and the number of waiting jobs in tourismplanning and management, it seems more likely thatthose students will quickly succumb to theaforementioned dictates of financial and politicalexpediency if they want to keep their jobs andadvance their careers.

Where we really excel then is in the expansionand replication of ourselves as an academic entity,indicated by an absurdly large number of

departments, peer-reviewed journals, conferences(the longer haul the better, apparently), majoringstudents, and, yes, navel-gazing articles aboutsustainable tourism. This is anything butsustainable (ironically!) but for now the well stillseems to have plenty of water, and there’s muchmore apparently to be drawn in a country like Chinaonce the domestic pipes run dry. It is the greatChinese hope that is apparently keeping many ofus from heeding the cracks in the edifice, evidencedin Australia for example in the growing number ofdepartments and programmes that are beingeliminated, consolidated or otherwise ‘rationalized’.Perhaps we need this wakeup call as an incentiveto reinvent ourselves in fundamental ways that aremore sustainable.

Let’s take a good hard look in the mirror andbe honest with ourselves; when we embark on aresearch exercise, are we primarily concerned withthe impact that the outcomes will have on the real(non-academic) world, or are we more concernedwith getting a paper published in a high tier journalthat will attract a healthy number of citations,increase our h-index, and enhance the likelihood oftenure or promotion and prestigious keynotespeaking invitations? The recent proliferation ofmuch-pondered articles ranking academics,journals and institutions has exacerbated thisunhealthy fixation (Murphy and Law 2008; Park etal. 2011). It really is all about ego, not making theworld a better place (except for us). Read anysampling of contemporary academic tourismliterature, and be awed by the revealed self-importance, whether expressed in a pontificatingand pretentious writing style, declarations that theresearch is existentially important, clever wordplay,or scandalous levels of self-citation. We know theanswers, if only anyone outside of our small self-referential circles would care to listen!

The reality is that our gurus and publishingsuperstars are unknown outside of academia, andour publications ignored. Regardless of what wewrite or say, the industry will evolve without us,and few consumers will heed our urgent entreatiesabout reducing the carbon footprint. And whyshould they heed us, given the enormity of our owncarbon footprint as we embark on all that ‘essential’



conference and research travel? Or do we believethat our emissions are justified by the criticalimportance of what we have to say? I have heardthis rationale from a lot of academics. Skype or otherforms of teleconferencing can serve the purpose justas well, but we like to travel and network withcolleagues face to face. Most of us in this regard atleast are not the exemplars of sustainability wepurport to be given the content of our writing.

Does this mean that there is no hope forsustainable tourism? Not at all. Regardless ofwhether we intervene or not, unsustainable tourismcannot stay in that condition indefinitely –unsustainability is unsustainable by definition(Weaver 2012). If something is unsustainable, it hasto change. It might be that the patient dies, but thisrarely happens in tourism. More likely, localstakeholders, who have the most to lose or gain fromlocal tourism activity, find ways to resolve theattendant problems. Consider the hopelessabominations of 1970s mass tourism such asBenidorm and Calvía, and consider further that nowthey apparently are not bad places to visit or inhabit(Ivars et al. 2013; Royle 2009). Ugly apartmentbuildings and hotels have been demolished andreplaced by more aesthetically pleasing andenvironmentally friendly structures, more green andpublic spaces have been created, and the beachesare Blue Flag Certified. The total destruction oftourism is far more likely to result from major naturaldisasters or wars (think Pompeii or the Varoshadistrict of Famagusta) that has little to do withtourism per se. Otherwise, it appears as ifdestinations possess a sort of built-in or naïveresilience that comes into play during crises ofcarrying capacity or other critical times.

This contribution may be dismissed by someas a cynical and exaggerated screed. Others maydeny that there is any problem, or contend that it isjust a matter of time before the field acquires criticalmass of knowledge and expertise. However, I arguethat looking at ourselves in the academic mirror andacknowledging our essential irrelevance to thesector, from a sustainability perspective inparticular, is an act of emancipation. This makes itpossible to become more relevant by really lookingat things in new ways. We need this reality check if

our engagement with sustainable tourism is to haveany meaning outside our sub-cultures. Once weacknowledge irrelevance, we can then try tounderstand why we are this way, and how we canmove forward. A common response for thoseacknowledging the problem is to blame the system,but this ignores our acquiescence to and integrationin that system – we help to keep it going.

A two-prong approach may help to resolve thisdilemma. First, the awards system for academics inuniversities should be changed to privilege socialimpact over academic prestige. Key performanceindicators, accordingly, would be introduced toshow direct and indirect pathways between theresearch (and teaching) and measurable outcomesfor society – Who has benefited? How have theybenefitted? How long did it take for the benefits tobe realized? How can this research and the resultantbenefits be leveraged to produce even more benefits?At a more sophisticated level, we could ask aboutthose who may have incurred costs as a result ofimplementing the research, and try to identifyopportunity costs, i.e. could the resources have beenbetter allocated to a different research project? Theresearch of the academic in this environment wouldhave not only be implemented but also subsequentevaluation to be done. Protocols and frameworksfor both would no doubt evolve as such a researchphilosophy became more normative.

Second, we need to spend more time in theindustries, communities and institutions thatembody the tourism sector of the real world. Only inthis way can we identify what people need andwant, what positive and negative effects areresulting from tourism, etc. For this to be effective,however, the spatial scale has to be compressedwhilst the temporal scale has to be expanded. Thatis, the academic must be willing to showcommitment to a particular destination – perhapsjust a single village – for an extended time, perhapseven an entire career. Such intense engagement isvery much in the anthropological tradition.Currently, in their quest to maximize output,academics tend to jump promiscuously fromdestination to destination and topic to topic, notexpending enough time or effort in any single placeto establish a good sense of what is happening there.



Sabbaticals or their equivalent would provide anideal opportunity for place/time immersion, and agood part of the efforts of academics, departmentsand research offices would be focused on identifyingplaces that are eager to cooperate with an institutionand its academics.

To give more substance to this idea, a group oftourism academics from different institutions withinAustralia, for example, could focus on East Timor,ideal because of its widespread poverty, proximity,and potential for tourism development. Shamefully,a search in the Leisure Tourism abstracts of CABIyielded only a handful of tourism-related articles,most of which were focused on tourists and theirpossibilities for contacting various nasty diseases(e.g., Visser et al. 2012) – so much for the EastTimorese. Why has East Timor, so closegeographically and geopolitically to Australia andso in need of development assistance, been ignoredby Australian tourism academics? An almostidentical situation pertains to Haiti with respect toUS-based tourism academics – it’s not on the radarscreen but should be, but not in the conventionaland dysfunctional way that academics currentlyengage destinations. It also seems logical, given theconsensus about properly contextualizing tourismwithin a broader systems perspective, for tourismacademics to work in tandem with academicspecialists in agriculture, fishing, etc. During theacademic review process, the question ‘How haveyou made a positive difference to the people of EastTimor?’ would be more important than ‘How manyhigh tier academic articles did you publish?’Although further tourism journal proliferation

should not be encouraged, I do see a role for a newJournal of the Social Impact of Tourism Research thatmight reconcile the two questions.

Perhaps it’s too late for those of us who havebeen playing the game for a long time. But we couldmake a contribution to change by reconfiguring theindividuals and topics that we take on for higherdegree supervision, and even earlier by what weemphasize in our lectures. At the top end, there arealso a number of prominent tourism academics whohave attained senior leadership roles in theadministration of their universities – would they bewilling to challenge the system and work towardthe introduction of a more social impacts-focusedparadigm? To reiterate, I don’t think it’sexaggerating to say that the system, at least as itpertains to tourism academics, is broken. We publisha lot of output, but it is not having any substantialimpact on the real world, the well-being of whichought to be our primary directive and the ultimategoal of sustainable tourism discourses. We are abloated field driven by ego, and if we were adestination we would be transitioning somewherein the unsustainable space between stagnation anddecline, all carrying capacities having been breacheda long time ago. We can rejuvenate ourselves byputting our self-importance aside and going towhere we belong among communities with whomwe develop committed relationships andresponsibilities. With more wisdom and humility,and supportive university administrations, we canbe agents of social change helping to achieve andnot just study sustainable tourism.

Sustainable Tourism: Milestone or Millstone?

BRIAN WHEELLERTwo recent, pretty much self-explanatory

newspaper article headlines say it all. ‘Google boss‘proud’ of tax-avoiding capitalism’ (Armitstead2012: 1). And ‘Lure of jobs and money threatens oneof Spain’s last wild beaches with destruction’(Roberts 2012: 2). But for further illumination, a littleelaboration from the latter reads ‘Valdevaqueros isa surfers’ paradise and a haven for rare wildlife,

but local politicians have approved a huge newtourist complex in an attempt to bring work to thecrisis-hit area..... Opponents claim it is flouting thespirit of planning conditions...... “Money is onceagain being put before urban laws and Europeanenvironmental directives”.... while, with traditionalsources of income dwindling, the pro-lobby counterwith “..... tourism is the only way out, as long as it is



sustainable”’. (My own italics, highlighting theinherent irony.)

So Mowforth and Munt (2003: 179) were (ofcourse) correct when, perceptive as ever, theyreminded us that ‘The Profit Maximization motivedoes have a tendency to subvert and subjugate otherconsiderations, ethical and environmental. It isessential to keep this in mind in any analysis of thetourism industry’. How true, and a pertinent quoteI often refer to. Despite the shoal of ‘red herrings’ tothe contrary this remains fundamentally the proforma for much of the tourism industry...it iseconomics not ecology that is so firmly in the drivingseat. And surely even more so if one were to insert,at the beginning of the quotation an appropriate ‘Inthe short-term’ the quotation....reflecting thepressing time-frame which most stakeholders(notably the tourists ourselves) operate within.

Attending the very enjoyable Tourism, ClimateChange and Sustainability Conference atBournemouth University (September, 2012) servedto re-affirm many of my fears and convictions. Fine,fine words from many present for the concept ofsustainable tourism – for the idea – indeed, the ideal:yet I think it would be fair to say (though, admittedly,my interpretation could of course be wrong) thatthe overall consensus from the speakers, panels andfloor (and also expertly articulated by one of theConference chairs) was that, actually despite all theworthy talk about environmental awareness, whenit comes down to the brass tacks of actual ‘customer’(i.e., tourist) behaviour then price remainsparamount. There may well be exceptions but theseare, indeed, the exceptions: not the rule. And, onceagain, when considered in the wider arena, at themacro level, such exceptions are so marginal as tobe meaningless — except, of course, as fuel forrhetoric.

Another article around the time struck me ashaving universal relevance – ‘When it comes tocustomers, price is the key’ (Cave 2012: B10). Albeit,I’m cherry-picking (well, in this case, grapes (butnot sour ones) – as the article in question wasactually about wine). Such ‘fruity’ talk re-iteratesthat it is economics not ecology that drives the world.And while McCool, seemingly sagely, cites Dryzek

(1987, cited from McCool’s lead probe), surely theargument that social choices must first beecologically rational (for losing that means all elseis irrelevant) seems to me to be based on the notionthat we, as a society, think in the long term: and notthe immediate. Which, I would suggest, is patentlynot the case: everyday matters dominate. And, goingfurther, turning a blind-eye to this immediacy is a –if not the – fundamental flaw in sustainabilitythinking. And one not really addressed in McCool’sspeculation. ‘When it comes down to it, instantgratification, as Carrie Fisher said in Postcards fromthe Edge, “just isn’t soon enough”’ (Patterson 2013:13).

Not directly mentioned, it may appeartangential to introduce the nonsense of SlowTourism into the proceedings here. But I suggest itis reasonable to do so, not so much as a counter andlink with the aforementioned speed and the instant,more on the basis of it being quite legitimate to tarall the goody two shoes, idealistic incarnations of(and spawned by) sustainable tourism – irrespectiveof their notional nomenclature – with the same thickbrush.

The list of such phantom ‘manifestations’ isendless (now we even have Hopeful Tourism – dearme, whatever next?). As an answer to the widerissues of tourism impact, all fly in the face ofcommon sense. While all, whatever their fancy nametag, might (or might not) look good on paper, justifiedin their own ‘write’, in practice they are so marginalas to be irrelevant – of no practical significancewhatsoever in tackling fundamental problems oftourism, development and environment: problemswhich essentially stem from the innate greed andselfishness of ‘humanity’ within an inherentlycorrupt, unbalanced world. Essentially, as a race,we are human and not humane.

Quite the contrary, all seem to rely on a beliefof the benign ‘goodness’ of humanity – on a naivedelusionary vision of mankind – yet theoverwhelming empirical evidence around us pointsto the absolute opposite. The belief seems to be thatpeople are more interested in others than inthemselves; in ecology rather than in economics,and a faith in the (potential) purity of human nature



that I don’t share. As far as I can tell – and may be Imiss the complexities and nuances of thesedisaggregated niches – whatever the nomenclature,all are afflicted by the same idealistic Never-NeverLand delusions that undermine the veracity of theparent ,‘sustainable tourism’ – in itself a phrase, asHumpty Dumpty once remarked ,that means allthings to all men (Wheeller 2007 ).

Slow Tourism is no exception to this illusion –the incongruity of which is summed up perfectly inthe Beach Boys KoKomo ‘We’ll get there fast andthen we’ll take it slow’ (Phillips et al. 1988). May beif all the proponents of ‘slow tourism’ travelling,say, to China took a slow boat rather than leavingon a jet plane then their cause would have morecredibility. But even then, once there, do thoseadvocating slow tourism want their service to beslow, too? Presumably they’ll only be happy withthe slowest taxi from the airport, the slowestreceptionist when checking in, the slowest waiter/waitress/ bar tender in the hotel or cafe? Do slowtourists book holidays on the internet (‘fastestconnection possible essential, please’), telephone –or rely on old fashioned, slow, snail mail?Presumably, slow tourists are quite happy, when itsuits, to apply the latest technology with noconsideration of the social and environmental costsnecessary for the production, provision andoperation of same? Is everything about slow tourismslow? Of course, not. Cherry-picking is the name ofthe game. As it is with advocates of any notionalform of sustainable tourism. (And, I readilyacknowledge, a process I am again happily adoptinghere with care-free abandon – hopefully to makethe very point). The rhythm of dance might well beslow, slow, quick, quick slow: the tourist/travellerbeing slow but the services looking after them quick,quick – upbeat, prompt and rapid. ‘Now, if notsooner thank you very much’.

Further, believers (and there is, in a sense, anundercurrent resembling religious zeal to all this)seem to assume that tourists are – or are potentially– of a ‘mindful’ rather than ‘mindless’ state of mind(see Langer 1990; Moscardo and Ballantyne 2008cited in Ryland 2013).That if ‘we’ educate ‘them’the way we think (no, know) then ‘they’ will behavebetter. They will be receptive. Things will improve.

And it will be better for them. Such (arrogant)optimism beggars belief.

The reliance on the assumption of humane asopposed to human behaviour simply doesn’t ringtrue. The gap between theory and practice is soglaringly obvious: always has been. And yet,mysteriously, still remains outside the radar of, andblatantly ignored by, blinkered advocates of ‘good’tourism.

And in the wider context? According to Vogt(2013: 16) ‘The Pope said yesterday that he wasoptimistic that this year will see peace triumph overunfettered capitalism, terrorism and criminality’Sounds familiar? We shall see what transpires –but don’t hold your breath. Reality would suggestotherwise.

And what of the myriad of accords /agreements /summits and conferencesostentatiously concerned with tourism andsustainability? Reeled off as ‘badges’ ofachievement, worn with pride: each presented as amilestone on the route map of sustained progress.Just a few of the plethora are cited by McCool:Bruntland, Rio, Spain etc. To many, markers ofheadway and the way forward: to me, rather thanmilestones, millstones – more akin to a litany ofdereliction and procrastination. Failurecamouflaged by rhetoric. Each another albatross,deadweight ( and worse) around our necks – moreuseless baggage to saddle us on the doomed journeyup a blind alley to the Promised Land of SustainableTourism. Again, by way of illustration, acontemporary newspaper reference: ‘The KyotoProtocol on climate change used to be a big deal. Sobig that the future of humanity was said to hinge onits implementation. Did you know it expired onNew Year’s Day? We’re guessing you didn’t, butdon’t worry. It’s no big deal. Adopted in 1997 andin force since 2005, the U.N. compact was intendedto lock its signatories into curbing or cutting theirgreenhouse-gas emissions relative to 1990 levels. Itdidn’t work out as planned’ (Anon. 2013: 15). Thedamning article continues to highlight the overambitious initial expedient claims and the reality ofsubsequent unfulfilled promises. This, of course,mirrors and sums up the dismal track record of



sustainable tourism – always claiming ‘potential’without ever actually realising it – exceptsomewhere over the rainbow. Promises, promises.

Reference to Coleridge’s epic poem, TheAncient Mariner (see Keach 1997) may (also) appearobtuse: yet an interpretation of his narrative is thatit serves as the perfect parable of man’s relationshipwith the natural environment and our misuse ofsame. Written over 200 years ago, it is aperspicacious (yet unheeded) salutary caution.

Basically, the eponymous protagonist shootsthe benign albatross that has befriended their vesseland, as a result of this dastardly unprovoked act,the Mariner is sentenced, by Nature – cursed andcondemned to suffer interminably.

Like Coleridge’s Mariner (or Elvis’ ‘SuspiciousMinds’) we are caught in a trap, we can’t get out.Sustainability – well, sustainable growth – hasbecome ‘all consuming’: in itself an enveloping(smothering) blanket..., the elusive blue-print forlaudable practice (‘Sustainable growth for all is aimof G20 Presidency’, Yakovenko 2013). Sustainabilityis, like the Mariner’s albatross, a self-inflicted yokewe cannot escape from. The Ancient Marinereventually casts off the dead albatross from aroundhis neck but even then only finds partial reprievefrom his torment, not total redemption. Similarly,sustainability, hindrance rather than panacea:instead of salvation, more a liability, endlesslystriving for the unobtainable. While we are in effectlost – all at sea, floundering for answers –sustainability, that seductive siren, persuasivelylures us, willing victims, onto the rocks.

Perhaps we should try something more radical.Butler’s thoughts on population control aren’tnecessarily beyond the pale. As a starter, personallyI’d probably settle for a reduction (eradication?) inthe number of pet dogs and cats – a vast potentialsaving of resources (not to mention, in the case ofthe latter, birds and small mammals) if ever therewas one. But then again convention has it that onecan only achieve so much in practice – as an eruditecorrespondent, in a pithy letter to the Guardian, putit ‘No matter how much you push the envelope, itwill always remain stationery’ (Toppin 2012: 33).

I do like and admire McCool’sacknowledgement of his ‘impressionistic’ approach– far more open, honest and laudable than one basedon questionable statistical data purporting fineprecision, exactness and accuracy. (The phrase ‘TheChallenge of the Illusion of Measurement,’ over-arching an installation on the University ofTasmania’s Hobart campus comes, reassuringly, tomind here.) It also affords the lee-way of adopting asimilar style. McCool argues for a different approach.And should be credited for that. But if I’veunderstood things correctly still assumes dialoguearound ‘sustainability’ can produce a solution.Unfortunately, I see the author’s approach as moreof a departure – and, at that, one from the very worthyobjective he aspires to earlier in the article. ThoughMcCool makes an incisive point when he positsturning the axis of questioning away from one of‘how to sustain tourism activity to one of what it isthat tourism should sustain’ as I read it, the paperdoes become (yet another) academic piece, theantithesis of ‘This is not simply a matter limited tothe ivory tower of academic discourse’. May be I ammisunderstanding the situation but opting for anall embracing, comprehensive systems approach asa solution doesn’t sound too practical to me.

For my own impressions, I suppose I go for achaotic rather than systematic approach to life ingeneral — so I guess, glibly, Chaos Theory overSystems Approach would seem to match my way ofthinking best — though, to be perfectly honest, I’mnot too sure precisely what either actually fullyentails in practice. For me, they both continue toinhabit the realms of abstract theory whilemasquerading as tools for practical application.And I’m not quite sure, if confronted, what a‘typical’ tourist (if such a creature exists in the wild)would make of either. I’m conscious though thatonce again, in an article claiming to distance itselffrom ivory tower abstraction, tourists themselvesdon’t seem to get much of a mention at all. And, bythe time McCool introduces the basin-analogy, hehas rather ‘taken his eye off the ball’, so as to speak.But may be I’m again missing the point here. And,by so doing, only compounding evidence as to mylack of understanding or even appreciation of thediscussion. I sincerely hope this not to be the



case...but one must recognize it as always apossibility.

McCool’s paper both opens, and closes, withtelling sentences. The article gets off to a‘questionable’ start. A few of us might feel that,actually, we’ve been asking the right questions foryears (Butler 1990; Wheeller 2003): it is just that theanswers have not been forthcoming. The impasse,though, is of no surprise given the cocktail ofbusiness/political/academic /sundry interests thatconstitute the pro-sustainability lobby – a potentmix that has gelled into a self-righteous protectiveshield (and halo), conscientiously and consistentlydiverting criticism for so long. Given, also, the factthat some of the questions posed are, of course,uncomfortably unanswerable has meant that it isno real wonder that, in practice, answers have beenlacking. In my view, we have had (albeit stilted)‘debate’ and ‘badly needed critical dialogue’ – or,rather, perhaps bad critical dialogue – for overtwenty years. And, as I say to my reckoning, ofteninvolving the ‘correct’ questions...it’s just that thesehave fallen on conveniently deaf ears: discussionstraight-jacketed primarily only in the sense thatthere have been no satisfactory answers to basicquestions.

If, however, McCool’s opening implicationthat this has not been the case (i.e., it is the correctquestions that are lacking) and that it is crucial thatwe do, indeed, ask the right questions (and that hepractises what he preaches) then it seems reasonableto assume – on the basis of leaving the best to thelast – his final sentence takes on added significance.For in it he concludes his piece by posing two,presumably particularly pertinent, questions of hisown. In my considered opinion, both of these can beeasily addressed - emphatically and unequivocally.‘Is it even realistic to consider sustainable tourismas a path to resilience?’ Well, ‘No’, of course. Andmy response to “... is it simply another in a long listof buzzwords?” A resounding, ‘Yes’.Straightforward.

I re-iterate that a number of probing questionswere asked by early sceptics but that these wereparried or effectively ignored, subsequentlyremaining conveniently unanswered over the years.

An obvious example being ( and here the (polite)reader stifles a yawn, while the more irritablemutters an exasperated expletive) how can we havesustainable tourism when all forms of tourismrequire some form of transport, yet no form oftransport is sustainable. Oh no! That old, tried andtired oxymoron patter. But, really, ‘How can youhave sustainable tourism on a realistic, meaningfulscale without any form of sustainable transport?’Answers please.

At the more generic level we must ask ourselveshave we as tourism academics actually made muchdifference in the theatre of sustainable tourism – letalone the staged authenticity of ‘sustainability’? Tothe ‘debate’? Hardly. To the industry? I doubt it.And to societal/tourist behaviour as a whole –andhere I don’t just mean the (so-called educated) elite?I’d say an emphatic ‘No’. Our role in the charade is,in effect, peripheral.

Weaver suggests we take a good hard look inthe mirror – for self-reflection not self-preening. Buteven if we did do this then most of us academicswould probably opt for the one-way looking glassalways, as luck would have it, readily to hand. Butin that case how many of us would then have thefortitude of Alice? A shame really as a dose of‘reverse logic’ might not go amiss here.

Sustainable tourism continues to morph intothe white elephant so gloomily predicted years ago‘Currently on board a bandwagon , manyproponents of eco/ego/sustainable tourism willsoon discover – if they don’t know it already – thatthey have been taken for a ride by a stampedingwhite elephant’ (Wheeller 1994: 11). In retrospect, Iguess, while this prediction was (on the surface) tosome extent perspicacious it was, nevertheless, stilllamentably naive: simultaneously both right andwrong. I thought that by now we would have seenthe light – that common sense would surely haveprevailed. But clearly this is not the case. Thoughcriticism of sustainability is, thankfully, mountingand, in the meantime, may be a wheel or two hasdropped off said band wagon, nevertheless nearly20 years on, unfortunately, the wagon keeps rollingalong.



But recent articles (see, for example, Driver2011) suggest the (similar) ‘fad’ for organic foodhas peaked and might be on the wane: that, contraryto predictions, demand has gone off the boil. Let’shope, when it too is boiled down to its bare bones,with all the excess flab and fat removed, that thesame fate awaits sustainable tourism. Also,predictions too that package holidays (ananathema/ scapegoat for many ‘sustainability’proponents) are in terminal decline may well havebeen premature (Thomas 2013) so there might besomething positive here to cling to.

I know I’m in danger of sounding like therecord stuck in the groove – repeating itself overand over again. In itself, risking this metaphor datesme – who listens to records any more, anyway? Butmay be the old original, unanswered questions could

be re-released? Or better still? Up-dated coverversions, re-packaged and delivered by bright ,young academics more in tune than perhaps I amwith ‘today’ – or, more importantly, ’tomorrow’ –are in order. Actually, in all honesty, I feel that-regardless of whatever questions are formulated andirrespective of how they are broached – satisfactory,clear answers would still prove elusive – withcontinued obfuscation rife. Like life in general, whenit comes down to (the practical implementation of)‘sustainable tourism’ there are, in the immortalwords of Johnny Nash, ‘more questions thananswers’. Succinct, wise and apposite words,indeed.

Meanwhile, unfortunately, the lame duck thatis sustainable tourism survives, to all intents andno purpose. And the canard continues.

Concluding Remarks

‘Optimism’, quantum computationist DavidDeutsch writes, forsees ‘the cause of failure asinsufficient knowledge’. Sustainability andsustainable tourism are very much discussed aboutthe future, a situation which is a function of thechoices humanity makes. But that future isunknowable, because we cannot imagine whatchoices will be made or what knowledge will begenerated that will affect those choices. An objectiveof this probe was to provoke a discussion aboutthat future and the role of knowledge in creating it.

In general, the respondents of my lead essayacknowledged the challenges confronting thenotion of sustainable tourism. Buckley tackled myessay head on, suggesting the importance ofconsidering issues such as population, peace,prosperity, pollution and protection. The others alsorecognized various challenges but in ways that Ihad not expected. Weaver criticized academia forbeing insulated from the real world and thusresulting in little impact on the course of sustainabletourism. Butler argued that we simply need topractice conservation. And Wheeller felt myproposal was just another academic paper. The latter

three were uniform in blaming politics andeconomics on the failure of sustainable tourism

The four reviewers concurred with me that thenotion of sustainable tourism is not doingparticularly well. We part ways from there thoughin identifying the cause of these failures. LikeDeutsch, I am an optimist, blaming failure on nothaving the knowledge to implement rather than onthe nebulous boogey-man world of politics oreconomics. I am neither willing to let the dismalpolitics nor the dreary economics that mycontenders blame for tourism’s failures abate myoptimism about the role of science and the potentialof people to overcome challenges no matter howdaunting.

If sustainable tourism is failing, it’s becausewe have not generated the right kind of knowledge,a point implied by Weaver. As human beings, wecan do anything except violating the laws of physicsif we so choose. If there is a reason for notimplementing something, we can look to knowledge.Lack of knowledge is the only barrier we face. Buthas academia contributed to the generation of thisknowledge? I share the reviewers’ concerns about



academia’s record of performance in the arena ofsustainable tourism. Indeed, this record was amotivation for agreeing to the editor’s invitation.But not all tourism academics are embedded inWeaver’s paradigm. For many of us, our mission isto both generate and disseminate knowledge inways that are useful.

This discussion on sustainable tourism mayor may not have elevated the dialogue or produced

a consensus direction to the future. But it hasexposed the need to think differently about ourworld. Passion trumps politics and economics; it’swhat makes the world tick—witness the peacefuldissolution of the corrupt Marcos government ofthe Philippines, the collapse of the repressive Sovietempire, the fall of the infamous Berlin Wall, theblossoming of a hopeful Arab spring. Its this passionand optimistic outlook we need to capture in ourdialogue.

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Sustainable Tourism: Guiding Fiction, Social Trap or Path to Resilience?

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