Linking Culture and the Environment

58 Sustainable Tourism Development on a ‘Mediterranean Isle’
involved in collaborative decision-making processes (Bramwell and Sharman,
1999; Burns, 1999, 2003; McCool and Stankey, 1999; Sauter and Leisen, 1999;
Timothy, 1999; Johnston, 2006; Johnson and Snepenger, 2006). For instance,
sustainability cannot be imposed at a tourist destination through top-down
physical planning mechanisms alone without accounting for the needs of
local communities, tourists, environmental groups, entrepreneurs and other
public or private organization. As McCool and Stankey argue, ‘public participation
in developmental decisions is a hallmark of many discussions of sustainable
development. [It is] viewed as necessary to identifying the
distributional consequences of decision-making [and is] also seen as essential
to successful implementation of sustainable development projects’
(McCool and Stankey, 1999, p. 41).
Ironically, however, the very effort to include all players in the planning
process means their conflicting priorities and expectations can be a major
barrier to achieving balanced forms of development, especially since the
‘power of stakeholders is often uneven’ (Bramwell and Sharman, 1999).
Previous studies have recognized this problematic situation, yet the vast
majority examine the contrasting agendas of different stakeholders at a single
point in time and downplay geographical contingencies (e.g. Sauter and
Leisen, 1999; Johnson and Snepenger, 2006). A fundamental question that
needs to be answered is whether the same sustainable development-oriented
policies can work in different geographical locations. This, as many authors
acknowledge, is unlikely (Wall, 1997).
It is easy to claim that sustainable development has a higher chance of
success in newly emerging tourist destinations (presumably because the
damage has not yet occurred) than in well-established resorts (Butler, 1999).
In reality, however, the lack of hindsight that accompanies an early stage of
tourism development means it will be hard to convince local stakeholders of
the merits of sustainable development; these players might not have yet witnessed
first-hand tourism’s long-term negative impacts on the environment
and society. By contrast, policy makers and other players in a mature destination,
precisely because they will have experienced the adverse impacts associated
with uncontrolled tourism development, are likelier to institute
balanced-growth strategies and regulatory instruments, only to discover that
these are largely ineffective overall since they often apply to future developments
and not existing, unsustainable operations (Butler and Stiakaki, 2001).
The moratoria on new tourist accommodation establishments instituted in
Cyprus during the late 1980s and early 1990s had negligible impact, to a large
extent because they did not affect a large number of establishments for which
building permits had already been secured (Ioannides, 1994; Ioannides and
Holcomb, 2003).
Studies relating to tourism should account for the overall development
of the destination area (Pearce, 1989). A locality’s degree of tourism growth
and its overall level of development certainly affect the attitudes and behaviour
of different players towards the role of tourism and sustainability practices
overall. Cooper argues appropriately that ‘the stage of the destination in
the life cycle also influences the acceptability of planning and marketing. In