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Linking Culture and the Environment

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15 Tourism <strong>and</strong> Indigenous<br />

Peoples<br />

ADAM TRAU AND ROBYN BUSHELL<br />

Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, Australia<br />

Strategies stressing <strong>the</strong> urgent need for policies <strong>and</strong> practices to ensure tourism<br />

development be in line with principles of sustainable development have<br />

been recommended by a wide range of international agencies <strong>and</strong> instrumentalities.<br />

These include <strong>the</strong> United Nations World Tourism Organization<br />

(UN-WTO), The United Nations <strong>Environment</strong> Program (UNEP), <strong>the</strong> United<br />

Nations Educational, Scientific <strong>and</strong> Cultural Organization (UNESCO), <strong>the</strong><br />

United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), regional<br />

UN commissions, international conservation bodies such as <strong>the</strong> International<br />

Union for <strong>the</strong> Conservation of Nature (IUCN) <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> International Council<br />

of Monuments <strong>and</strong> Sites (ICOMOS), many conservation NGOs <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> international<br />

banks. In 2002, <strong>the</strong> International Year of Ecotourism brought toge<strong>the</strong>r<br />

<strong>the</strong> largest ga<strong>the</strong>ring of all stakeholders involved in ecotourism, <strong>and</strong> interested<br />

in more sustainable forms of tourism. It focused much attention <strong>and</strong><br />

interest on <strong>the</strong> ecological, social <strong>and</strong> cultural costs <strong>and</strong> benefits of tourism.<br />

This same year <strong>the</strong> World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)<br />

drew attention to tourism <strong>and</strong> its potential to support <strong>the</strong> UN Millennium<br />

Development Goals. The following year <strong>the</strong> International Ecotourism<br />

Society <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> Centre on Ecotourism <strong>and</strong> Sustainable Development prepared<br />

‘Rights <strong>and</strong> Responsibilities’ a compilation of Codes of Conduct for<br />

Tourism <strong>and</strong> Indigenous Local Communities (Honey <strong>and</strong> Thullen, 2003) in<br />

recog nition of <strong>the</strong> need for sustainable tourism to be ‘an instrument for <strong>the</strong><br />

empowerment of local communities, for <strong>the</strong> maintenance of cultural diversity<br />

<strong>and</strong> for <strong>the</strong> alleviation of poverty’.<br />

Such fora <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> associated policies <strong>and</strong> strategies 1 generated for sustainable<br />

tourism have increasingly emphasized both <strong>the</strong> issues faced by, <strong>and</strong><br />

<strong>the</strong> opportunities for, indigenous people worldwide. As an example, <strong>the</strong> 5th<br />

World Parks Congress, held in Durban South Africa, identified tourism as an<br />

increasingly important feature of park management <strong>and</strong> conservation partnerships.<br />

Co-management of protected areas by natural resource manage-<br />

©CAB International 2008. Tourism, Recreation <strong>and</strong> Sustainability:<br />

260 <strong>Linking</strong> <strong>Culture</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Environment</strong>, 2nd edn (eds S.F. McCool <strong>and</strong> R.N. Moisey)

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