Linking Culture and the Environment

286 Sustainable Tourism in the 21st Century
Common goal of
economic and
resource sustainability
Tourism industry
Nature/history/culture
based
Nature
tourism
Sustainability
Management agencies
Resource protection
Multiple use
Business
opportunities
Managed
resource use
Common goal of
economic and
social/cultural
sustainability
Local residents
Resource protection/use
Common goal of
sustainable
resource use and
protection
Fig. 16.1. Major participants in tourism development and their shared goals and
opportunities for social, natural resource and economic sustainability.
system, given the system characteristic. While the tourism sector has an
inherent interest in sustaining tourism, at some level there is the understanding
that their tourism product is based on either the cultural or environment al
resources. The community is motivated to sustain their quality of life; that
includes such issues as a healthy economy and ecosystem. Public land management
agencies rely upon the tourism industry to provide economic and
political support and the community is their constituency. If meanings are
not shared, the linkages among sectors cannot be articulated and mitigation
of negative effects cannot proceed. The efficacy of this mutualistic system is
highly dependent upon shared definitions of sustainability.
Without shared meanings, sustainability does indeed become nothing
more than a ‘guiding fiction’ leaving the participants with a moving target of
an idealized end state, yet paralyzed when it comes to taking action. Ioannides
(Chapter 4) illustrates this within his longitudinal framework where over
time and scale, definitions of sustainability change in response to the development
stage of a destination. Understanding where in the development
process we are might provide insight into why participants may or may not
embrace sustainability, engage in appropriate actions or develop meaningful
discourse with other segments. Dawson’s (Chapter 3) discussion of the
Tourism Opportunity Spectrum provides another framework to assess what
opportunities should be sustained and the impacts of alternative development
scenarios in terms of sustainability.