Linking Culture and the Environment

288 Sustainable Tourism in the 21st Century
neglected. What options are available if local values and politics do not
favour public participation? Gender, economic well-being and social status
also play a role in the social acceptability of political involvement. Under
such social and political systems achieving sustainability appears unlikely, if
only because when groups are excluded based on gender, race or ethnicity,
sustainable tourism loses its legitimacy. Tourism can bring about social and
economic changes in communities dependent upon traditional industries
and socio-political roles. Tourism tends to employ those less economically
independent in the traditional natural resource industries. Economic independence
engenders political empowerment, which in turn fosters enlightenment
and participation within the political system.
An inequitable sharing of the benefits of tourism has been shown to breed
a ‘collective indifference’ – tourism becomes less salient, which tends to stifle
widespread participation. The community becomes less cohesive in defining
the role that tourism plays in its development. This lack of community solidarity
in turn determines not only support for tourism development but also the
degree of citizen participation. Participation by only those positively affected
by tourism will focus issues of sustainability on beneficial aspects of tourism –
sustainability of tourism becomes the goal rather than a broader focus on
community sustainability and resiliency. Thus, through neglect of authentic
participatory processes, important elements of the tourism product – such
as the friendliness of local people – are lost and anti-tourism attitudes and
behaviours develop.
In broader circles, considerable discussion has focused on the role of science
in defining sustainability. Science can provide information about the
costs of decisions and the interrelationships between the various players,
trade-offs between costs and benefits and the potential impacts of alternative
scenarios. But, science cannot decide what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – these are
value-based decisions ideally left up to all affected individuals. This leads to
a paradox: can we integrate both science and values effectively into sustainable
decisions? This in turn leads to additional questions. Is sustainability a
technical or value/moral issue? What is the role of traditional knowledge in
defining sustainability, and who decides the role of each? And, who gets to
decide what will be sustained and how?
No one argues that participation is not important to integrate local
knowledge or protect local values in the search for sustainability. Indeed,
without participation, communities lose their identity – their sense of place.
Lack of participation leads to inappropriate goal setting with little or no
ownership in a shared vision of development options. Community solidarity
is weakened. The pathway to sustainability becomes lost.
Linking planning with outcomes: decisions and trade-offs
Planning involves decisions about desired future conditions that involve
trade-offs in both the short and long term. Sustainable tourism does not just
happen, it occurs only with explicit decision-making processes that consider