Critical Omissions and New Directions for Sustainable Tourism: A Situated Macro–Micro Approach

Abstract

This paper traces the history and evolution of sustainable tourism and identifies some critical issues and omissions in this and related approaches such as responsible tourism, ecotourism and pro-poor tourism. The academic, institutional and practical intersections of sustainable tourism and responsible tourism are examined. It reveals that important theoretical and practical considerations around well-being, inclusion, and sustainability have been omitted. A critical look at ecotourism reveals additional concerns, such as a cornucopia of guidelines and principles, without clear ethical justifications to support them. At the same time, academics in this domain have been slow to consider the modernist and neoliberal influences shaping ecotourism and sustainable tourism development, such as through the discourse of ecological modernization. We identify some key omissions, such as the missing ‗body' in sustainable tourism discourse, lack of critical analysis of postcolonial and dependency issues, and propose re-situating ‗sustainable tourism' within a micro-macro, local-global systems approach informed by a clear framework of justice and ethics.

There Is No Such Thing as Sustainable Tourism: Re-Conceptualizing Tourism as a Tool for Sustainability

“…One major outcome of this attention has been the rise of the concept of ST. Several authors have provided historical reviews of this concept and its previous and current use in tourism [5][6][7]. What is of most relevance to this special issue and the present paper are the critiques of its formulation.…”

“…This placement of tourist or market needs as the core driver of the process, and the often unstated and unchallenged assumption that a viable and profitable tourism industry is the end goal of tourism planning has unfortunately also been adopted in most applications of ST [7,10,13,14]. Guidelines for ST practice assume that some form of tourism practice is sustainable and rarely, if ever, is "no tourism" considered as a serious option.…”

“…What is of most relevance to this special issue and the present paper are the critiques of its formulation. Five main issues with regard to ST have been identified-it is tourism or tourist-centric, it is focused on the destination space and ignores the larger global system that tourism is a part of, it highlights environmental concerns and often ignores other dimensions of sustainability, it is usually driven by academics and institutions that present sustainability as an objective, scientific concept best achieved by the development and enforcement of rules and guidelines for specific practice, and it is not integrated into other activities [5][6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…These gaps in ST are partly the result of the fourth problem; the dominance of external experts in the development of ST rules, guidelines and standards which assume a shared objective scientific view of sustainability. This framing of ST further disempowers other stakeholders, especially local residents [7][8][9][10], ignores the value-laden, subjective, cultural nature of sustainability, and thus fails to address the justice issues that are critical to understanding the origins of unsustainability [4,6,7].…”

“…ST is typically translated into sets of guidelines and rules for practice that focus almost exclusively on immediate, local, environmental impacts and are driven by academics and organizations that adhere to a view of sustainability as an objective concept supported by science [4][5][6][7]9,10,13,14]. While it is important to address immediate local environmental impacts of tourism, a failure to consider the wider, cumulative, long-term and other impacts of tourism means that it may be possible to label an activity as ST even if it fails to address the bulk of the issues identified in the wider sustainability literature.…”