Sustainable Tourism - Essay Example

Running Head: Sustainable Tourism Sustainable Tourism [Institute’s Sustainable Tourism Introduction Over the past decades, theconcept of sustainable tourism has been one of the widely debated in most of strategic tourism planning papers. Experts (Richards, pp. 23-39, 2000) have not been able to come up with a standardized, unique, and universal definition for this term; however, the basic idea remained the same of balancing the growth of this industry with environmental, cultural, and social concerns. Moreover, despite the ample amount of literature (Krueger, pp. 17-40, 2007) available on this topic, it rarely highlights its historical development and evolution over the past decades. This paper aims to find links of term of sustainable tourism with sustainable development. Moreover, this paper will try to highlight their influence on each other. Sustainable Conception It was around mid 20th century when experts (Gruder, pp. 81-88, 2007) all around the world increasingly felt that no development witnessed over the time was free from the cost of environmental deterioration. They realized that human species has been developing at an accelerating pace, and this growth has benefited many people as well. However, this development has been happening at the expense of sustainability of this planet. Quite understandably, as responsible citizens of this planet, and keeping in mind the long-term existence of humans on this planet, some steps were essential. In the year 1972, at the Stockholm Conference on Humans and the Environment (Meadows, pp. 1-14, 1972), it was the first time when under flag of United Nations, this topic was brought under consideration. Despite the fact that it was after mid 19th century when the concept of sustainable development came up on the screen in its current form; however, in some form or the other, the concern of balancing human growth with other environmental and external factors has been there since centuries. In context of tourism, one of the earliest examples of tourism were found in Mesopotamia, where the administration made sincere efforts in development of recreational areas, preservation of animals and plants and balancing their reproduction growth with the hunting activity (Butler, pp. 40-45, 1990). Many other great rulers like Alexander the Great and Asoka followed these ideas and tried to implement concept of sustainable development in the field of tourism within their capacity and constraints and research of that time (UBC, pp. 11-27, 2008). One of the most important developments in the field of sustainable developments was presentation of the romantic vision by Hall (pp. 13-34, 1998) in the 19th century, which is still the basis of modern progress in the field of sustainable development. His vision was dynamic, which asked people to consider themselves as a part of nature and not by means superior to it. Following and understanding this theory in its true sense, gives a holistic view of sustainable development. The reason why humans have been engaged in environmentally non-friendly activities that they thought that humans are some superior to nature and in case of a contradiction the later would be worth compromising for the former. However, Hall (pp. 13-34, 1998) along with various other experts made the world understand that humans are a part of this natural eco-system. Humans are alive, growing, and developing just because of the fact, that eco-system of this planet has accepted them as a part of it. In fact, a deeper analysis leads us to conclude that the human species does not enjoy that much right on this planet as compared to other animals and plants. The reason being that these plants and animals exist on planet earth since millions of years, even centuries before the arrival of the first man on this planet. At the same time, when this vision and idea was gaining prominence, a desire emerged in the mind of country’s policy makers to preserve areas. The United States took the lead by forming the Yellowstone National Park. Australia followed route of the United States and within no time declared the Royal National Park as Australia’s first national park in 1879. The formation of these parks indicated that these countries were thinking about their future generations and saving something for them in form of land as well. On the other hand, it was in the era of 1980’s when experts (World Commission on Environment and Development, pp. 9-25, 1987) started supporting tourism as an industry and started telling the world that it has the potential to bring a trickle down or multipler effect towards the local people of tourism areas. With involvement of the local residents as partners, stakeholders and sustainability insurers, tourism took its first step in the recent history towards sustainable development. With inclusion of the local community, local people no longer felt alienated and left outs. Including them also meant that their concerns, problems, issues, and ideas were listened, considered, and understood to create a win/win situation for both of the stakeholders. The literature (Cooper, pp. 67-75, 2009) proves that not only this has helped in achieving the first step towards sustainable tourism and development but towards the achievement of increased economic activity and growth. Application of Sustainable Development to Sustainable Tourism People for many years used to believe the nature has unlimited resources, the capability to feed unlimited people and can absorb and take the waste reaching drastic levels. However, the tables turned in 1972; the Club of Rome (Meadows, pp. 20-23, 1972) released a report entitled The Limits to Growth (Meadows, pp. 20-23, 1972), which challenged this assumption with solid and concrete proofs. In the next year, Ecological Principles for Economic Development (IUCN, pp. 1-5, 1980) linked the environmental concerns and development with economic development and the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN, pp. 1-5, 1980). It was in 1987 when these organizations came up with a somewhat comparatively agreed definition of sustainable development. They defined it as “process to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, pp. 8, 1987). More importantly, the literature proves that the term sustainable tourism is much older than sustainable development. This is because it was in 1979 when experts started using the word and concept of new tourism that could limit the tourism activities so that it does not exceed more than the capacity, preserving towns, protecting the heritage and cultural values, respecting the architectural traditions and educate the tourists. Further developments in the fields of sustainable development and sustainable tourism came on the scene due to the intervention of Australian National Ecologically Sustainable Development Strategy (NSESD) and World Tourism Organization (WTO). With the efforts of both of these organizations, the Australian administration (Bass, pp. 46-53, 2002) came up with the concept of ecologically sustainable development (ESD), which emphasized to consider all ecological factors during the economic development process. Moreover, not only the Australian government introduced this concept of ESD but also made systematic arrangements and came up with a plan to implement the same. For the past decade or so, there have been at least four shifts regarding the relationship between sustainable development and the tourism sector. In fact, experts say that examining these shifts provide a broader picture of sustainable tourism than by looking at the definition of sustainable tourism. The first position was before the 1990s when sustainable tourism and sustainable development were operating simultaneously. However, sustainable tourism industry was the smaller one and sustainable development was quite understandably had a larger share of the market. The shift occurred during the early 1990s when experts felt that sustainable tourism and development are developing a sense of link, continuity, and relationship between them. However, definition of both of these types by scale of business was still there. During the late 1990s, observers (Bramwell, pp. 46-51, 2000) realized that the second position is now undergoing a change and shifting to a new position. This third position argued that sustainability should be key element of mass tourism as well and it is not something, which is restricted to scale, or other factors. This brought an era of increased awareness about the same and governments showed more concerns over the application of sustainable practices in mass tourism businesses as well. The fourth position was a result of convergence of these sectors. This position held the belief that all sorts of tourism businesses would have the element of sustainability to the utmost levels. This position does not distinguish between sustainable development and sustainable tourism, since it holds the belief that all sort of tourism are required to adopt sustainable practices. Recently, one can observe various projects of the sustainable tourism, promoting ideas of sustainable development rather than limiting their scope on just tourism. Specifically, some of such projects are Annapurna Conservation Area Project (South-Asia, 2007), The Hotel Ucliva Project (UBC, pp. 5-23, 2008), etc. Conclusion Finally, there are two very important questions surrounding future and related developments in the field of sustainable tourism. Firstly, the question of a proper theoretical framework for sustainable tourism and why this field has not been able to develop one. As mentioned earlier in the paper, sustainable tourism lacks a unified and universal definition. Moreover, this paper looked at the four shifts in this field, which very much summarizes the whole story. However, this shows that this field has more of a reactive kind rather than basing on a solid theoretical framework. Therefore, experts require doing a lot of work in this area. The second question is regarding the extent to which real changes are taking place. It is important here to understand that building new tourism industries on the sustainable model or converting the previous models on to a sustainable approach will not solve the problems. For finding permanent solutions, stakeholders would have to try to eliminate the previous practices, which lead to unsustainable environment. Without any doubts, this cannot happen without the support of all the stakeholders. References Bass, Stephen. (2002). Sustainable Development Strategies. OECD Publishing. Bramwell, B. (2000). Tourism Collaboration and Partnerships. Channel View. Butler, R. Watson. (1990). “Alternative Tourism.” Journal of Travel Research. Issue of winter 1990, pp. 40-45. Cooper, Ian. (2009). Sustainable Urban Development. Taylor & Francis. Gruder, Sherrie. (2007). Toward a Sustainable Community. SHWEC Publications. Hall, C. M. (1998). “Historical antecedents of sustainable development and ecotourism.” Sustainable Tourism. Longman, pp. 13-34. IUCN. (1980). World Conservation Strategy. IUCN. Krueger, Rob. (2007). the Sustainable Development Paradox. Guilford Press. Meadows, David H. (1972) the Limits to Growth. Earth Island. Richards, Greg. (2000). Tourism and Sustainable Community Development. Routledge. South-Asia. (2007). Annapurna Conservation Area Project. Retrieved on March 07, 2010: www.south-asia.com/Kingmah/acap.htm UBC. (2008). Infrastructure & Communities. University of British Columbia Press. World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our Common Future. 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