Tourism Development and the Environment

Tourism Development and the Environment is the first in the new Earthscan series Tourism, Environment and Development. The aim of the series is to explore, within a variety of contexts, the developmental role of tourism as it relates explicitly to its environmental consequences. Each book will review critically and challenge 'traditional' perspectives on (sustainable) tourism development, exploring new approaches that reflect contemporary economic, socio-cultural and political contexts. The purpose of Tourism Development and the Environment is twofold. Primarily, it challenges the sustainable tourism development paradigm that has come to dominate both theoretical and practical approaches to tourism development over the last two decades or so. In so doing, the book aims to extend the sustainable tourism debate beyond the arguably managerialist 'blueprint' and destination-focused approach that continues to characterise even the most recent 'sustainability' agenda within tourism development. Reviewing the evolution of the sustainable tourism development concept, its contemporary manifestations in academic literature and policy developments and processes, the author compares its limitations to prevailing political-economic, socio-cultural and environmental contexts. He then proposes alternative approaches to tourism development which, nevertheless, retain environmental sustainability as a prerequisite of tourism development. But the book also aims to act as an introduction to the series as a whole. A number of issues raised in Tourism Development and the Environment demand more detailed analysis and debate in their own right, whilst also being applicable to different tourism developmental contexts, such as island micro-states, less-developed / transitional economies and urban tourism.