Linking Culture and the Environment

80 Tourism, Sustainability and the Social Milieux
Sustainability and its social dimensions
Sustainability in a social sense is deserving of special attention because,
unlike its ecological and economic siblings, social sustainability more obviously
involves people. For this reason, approaches to defining sustainability
in operational terms that ignore people and their use of natural environments
might be considered suspect. A sector-specific approach, for example, such
as sustainable forestry, focuses on forest industry activities to the exclusion of
all others. Even ecological sustainability, driven by the stress-response ecological
model, places science and scientific knowledge far in front of the
interests and understanding of local people. In the following section, we
examine various approaches to social sustainability in order to prepare for
our inquiry into how people in the region view it.
No term since the ubiquitous ‘lifestyle’ has captured the imaginations of
social and natural scientists as well as the public in the way that the terms
‘sustainable development’ or the more recent ‘sustainability’ have. Some see
in the term a new paradigm for conservation (e.g. Salwasser, 1990); others see
a retreat from protection and preservation (e.g. Noss, 1991). Indeed, the term
has been bent into a variety of shapes and meanings: for example, sustained
development and sustainable growth, in relation to resources; or, sustainable
budget or government, in relation to public administration. Some enthusiasts
(e.g. Ontario Hydro, 1990; Skidmore, 1990) seem to believe the term
means ‘business as usual’. As used in the Brundtland Commission Report
(1987), sustainability loses its potentially analytical edge. That economic
growth is necessary and that care ought to be taken not to diminish the
biosphere’s capability for future generations is a mere platitude. This definition
is so weak that the idea of sustainable utilization, as set out in the 1980
World Conservation Strategy, seems powerful by comparison.
The first World Conservation Strategy (IUCN et al., 1980) made ‘sustainable
utilization’ one of three main principles for the conservation of living
resources. Sustainable utilization comprised not only the obvious
economic dimension but also social and ecological components. If sustainable
utilization and sustainable development can be equated, then it
becomes possible to differentiate three interrelated dimensions of the term.
Development which is ecologically sustainable does not disrupt the ecological
integrity of a site or region; development which is socially sustainable
does not alter the ways of life of people in a region; and, development
which is economically sustainable does not disrupt existing economic
structures.
This view is open to a number of criticisms, not the least of which being
that it is hopelessly naive in its understanding of how social and economic
change occurs in a capitalist economy. However, this approach is significant
for two reasons: it differentiates three dimensions upon which development of
any kind will have effects; and it brings people and their forms of social and
economic organization into conservation decision making at a fundamental
level.
In 1990, the IUCN and its partners discarded the term ‘sustainable development’,
opting instead for the more analytical ‘sustainability’. In the reshaping of
the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN et al., 1990), sustainability comprises