the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

circumstances, the impacts of tourism will not be homogenous, nor will the
measures available to minimise such impacts.
9.3 Globalisation and the Growth of Tourism
As discussed in the theoretical framework in chapter three, tourism is one of the
most obvious forms of globalisation (Held et ai, 1999). Meethan's (2001) description
of globalisation as being characterised by increasing economic, social and cultural
interconnections, that exist across national boundaries, and which are increasingly
impacting upon the daily lives of people around the world is valid for this study.
Globalisation has provided the context to facilitate the development of international
tourism in previously isolated Third World locales such as the Okavango Delta, while
alternatively, tourism itself has facilitated the spread of the globalisation
phenomenon. This is in keeping with Ugarteche's (2000) view that globalisation is
"...the growth in an economic activity (such as tourism) that transcends national and
regional boundaries (p. 75).
Coupled with, and as a response to the rise of globalisation and its resultant
disintegration of national boundaries and spread of goods services and people to
previously isolated areas, has been the use of tourism by Third World governments
and economies as a development strategy. This has significantly facilitated the
growth of international tourism in rural, underdeveloped destinations such as the
Okavango Delta since the 1980s.
9.4 Tourism as a Development Strategy
Research into the motivations for the growth of tourism in Third World economies
led to theorising, which focused primarily on the use of tourism as a development
strategy. Third World tourism growth can be conceptualised as a consequence of
the rise of modernisation as a form of social order and conceptualising the world, the
movement of society through the post-modern period, and the resultant
development of the globalisation process. These changes in societal structures
facilitated the demand by First World travellers for 'new and exotic' tourist
destinations, effectively turning rural, previously isolated areas and cultures into
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