Rethinking Tourism and Environmental Governance


Book Description

Rethinking Tourism and Environmental Governance Subtitle: A Study of Decision-Making in St. Kitts for Long-term Preservation Rethinking Tourism and Environmental GovernanceBook Description Explore the critical intersection of tourism and environmental sustainability in the Caribbean with "Rethinking Tourism and Environmental Governance." This insightful book delves into the challenges faced by the wider Caribbean region, especially in economies heavily dependent on tourism. The narrative takes a deep dive into the delicate balance between economic growth and environmental preservation, using the case study of St. Kitts. Preface Overview In the preface, the author highlights the pivotal moment the Caribbean finds itself in, having experienced remarkable growth in tourism over two decades. However, this success comes at a cost-the strain on finite natural resources and the resulting environmental decay. The book underscores the irony that an industry designed to showcase natural beauty has become a significant contributor to its decline. Key Themes Explored1. Closed Environmental Policy The research contends that St. Kitts exhibits a closed environmental policy, where citizen concerns are not adequately considered in decision-making. 2. Citizen Engagement Emphasizes the importance of soliciting opinions and concerns from citizens and stakeholders to create a comprehensive understanding of the issues at hand. 3. Government-Community Relations Addresses the need for fostering support and trust in government actions to avoid confusion and resentment, which can impede effective environmental policies. 4. Perceptions and Beliefs Investigates the perceptions, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs of local citizens regarding the environment, tourism development, and the relationship between government leaders and citizens. 5. Exclusion and Self-Interest Explores the hypothesis that specific user groups feel excluded from the decision-making process and that government actions may be driven by the self-interest of the political and economic elite. 6. Recommendations for Sustainable Development Provides recommendations based on research findings, including the importance of increasing public awareness, environmental education programs, involving specific groups in project planning, and empowering the community to take responsibility for their surroundings. 7. Youth Involvement Advocates for the involvement of young people in implementing recommendations, recognizing their role in shaping the future of sustainable development. Why You Should Read This Book "Rethinking Tourism and Environmental Governance" offers a compelling exploration of the complex relationship between tourism, environmental policy, and citizen engagement. By examining the case of St. Kitts, it provides valuable insights and practical recommendations for achieving sustainable development in tourism-dependent economies. This book is a must-read for policymakers, environmentalists, and anyone passionate about the delicate balance between economic growth and environmental preservation. Tourism;Environmental Governance;Caribbean;St. Kitts;Sustainable Development;Citizen Engagement;Environmental Policy;Tourism Industry;Economic Impacts;Community Empowerment;Government Relations;Environmental Education;User Group Perceptions;Decision-Making Process;Community Involvement;Young People;Political and Economic Elite;Public Awareness;Tourism and Environment;Caribbean Development




Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel


Book Description

Deborah McLaren presents a comprehensive overview of the history and global development of tourism, often considered the largest industry in the world today. No study of the globalization of the world's economy and industry can afford to ignore the impact that tourism is having in an ever shrinking world where wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands -- and within this important book the impact of tourism is thoroughly explored.




Rethinking Tourism and Development


Book Description

Rethinking Tourism and Development provides a critical analysis of the tourism industry's impact on development and the environment. While tourism contributes significantly to the global economy, it also generates environmental costs that can no longer be ignored. This book challenges the conventional paradigm of sustainable tourism development and proposes a radical new approach to address the negative impacts of tourism centred on degrowth.




Rethinking Private Authority


Book Description

Rethinking Private Authority examines the role of non-state actors in global environmental politics, arguing that a fuller understanding of their role requires a new way of conceptualizing private authority. Jessica Green identifies two distinct forms of private authority--one in which states delegate authority to private actors, and another in which entrepreneurial actors generate their own rules, persuading others to adopt them. Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence spanning a century of environmental rule making, Green shows how the delegation of authority to private actors has played a small but consistent role in multilateral environmental agreements over the past fifty years, largely in the area of treaty implementation. This contrasts with entrepreneurial authority, where most private environmental rules have been created in the past two decades. Green traces how this dynamic and fast-growing form of private authority is becoming increasingly common in areas ranging from organic food to green building practices to sustainable tourism. She persuasively argues that the configuration of state preferences and the existing institutional landscape are paramount to explaining why private authority emerges and assumes the form that it does. In-depth cases on climate change provide evidence for her arguments. Groundbreaking in scope, Rethinking Private Authority demonstrates that authority in world politics is diffused across multiple levels and diverse actors, and it offers a more complete picture of how private actors are helping to shape our response to today's most pressing environmental problems.




Resilient Destinations and Tourism


Book Description

Sustainability is one of the most important issues currently facing the tourism sector. Recently, the role of resilience thinking has been highlighted in sustainable development discussions as an alternative perspective. This book approaches these concepts as interwoven processes and looks at change through a socioecological lens. Instead of seeing resilience and sustainability as alternative approaches, Resilient Destinations and Tourism argues that resilience should be understood as a fundamental part of sustainable tourism thinking for destination systems, and calls for better governance in implementation and management. Improving governance is the key issue in sustainable tourism development. The chapters in this edited collection focus on resilient destinations from a governance perspective, in which tourism resilience is contextualized as an integral part of pathway creation in the process of moving towards sustainable tourism. The contributions to the book represent a range of theoretical and empirical approaches with a wide international scope. Resilient Destinations and Tourism calls for rethinking the meaning of sustainable development in tourism and looks at how sustainability and resilience could be integrated. This book will appeal to a wide range of research disciplines and students whose modules focus on the relationship between tourism and sustainability planning, governance, the environment, and hazards and disasters.




Tourism Governance


Book Description

The role of governance has only recently begun to be researched and discussed in order to better understand tourism policy making and planning, and tourism development. Governance encompasses the many ways in which societies and industries are governed, given permission or assistance, or steered by government and numerous other actors, including the private sector, NGOs and communities. This book explains and evaluates critical perspectives on the governance of tourism, examining these in the context of tourism and sustainable development. Governance processes fundamentally affect whether – and how – progress is made toward securing the economic, socio-cultural and environmental goals of sustainable development. The critical perspectives on tourism governance, examined here, challenge and re-conceptualise established ideas in tourism policy and planning, as well as engage with theoretical frameworks from other social science fields. The contributors assess theoretical frameworks that help explain the governance of tourism and sustainability. They also explore tourism governance at national, regional and local scales, and the relations between them. They assess issues of power and politics in policy making and planning, and they consider changing governance relationships over time and the associated potential for social learning. The collection brings insights from leading researchers, and examines important new theoretical frameworks for tourism research. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Sustainable Tourism.




Socialising Tourism


Book Description

Once touted as the world’s largest industry and also a tool for fostering peace and global understanding, tourism has certainly been a major force shaping our world. The recent COVID-19 crisis has led to calls to transform tourism and reset it along more ethical and sustainable lines. It was in this context that calls to "socialise tourism" emerged (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020). This edited volume builds on this work by employing the term Socialising Tourism as a broad conceptual focal point and guiding term for industry, activists and academics to rethink tourism for social and ecological justice. Socialising Tourism means reorienting travel and tourism based on the rights, interests, and safeguarding of traditional ecological and cultural knowledges of local peoples, communities and living landscapes. This means making tourism work for the public good and taking seriously the idea of putting the social and ecological before profit and growth as the world re-emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic. This is an essential first step for tourism to be made accountable to the limits of the planet. Concepts discussed include Indigenous culture, toxic tourism, a "theory of care", dismantling whiteness, decolonial tourism and animal oppression, among others, all in the context of a post-COVID-19 world. This will be essential reading for all upper-level students, academics and policymakers in the field of tourism. The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781003164616




OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2020


Book Description

The 2020 edition analyses tourism performance and policy trends across 51 OECD countries and partner economies. It highlights the need for coherent and comprehensive approaches to tourism policy making, and the significance of the tourism economy, with data covering domestic, inbound and outbound tourism, enterprises and employment, and internal tourism consumption.




Tourism and Sustainable Development


Book Description

"Sustainability is a central term in today's political rhetoric. At the same time, sustainable development is one of the notions which mainly base on an intuitive public understanding and mark ideas almost nobody would deny. Thus, even in scientific discourse and particularly in tourism the term 'sustainability' is often being used without scrutiny. This volume by Jörn W. Mundt contributes to a deeper understanding of the concept of sustainability by providing a closer look at the original definition and reviewing its conceptual history which helps to untangle the terminological confusion. Finally, the book demonstrates that 'sustainable tourism' cannot be a political objective in its own right and is only achievable within the context of an overall sustainable economy."--Back cover.




Rethinking Sustainable Tourism in Geographical Environments


Book Description

This book covers the current escalation of social problems related to the unstable political situation, economic crisis, as well as growing problems related to the state of the natural environment (existential climate crisis; pollution of land, oceans, and the atmosphere; severe declines in biodiversity) which requires a new rethinking of the sustainable tourism paradigm, in relation to the realities of the modern world, based on the practices observed in the tourist services sector. „Tourism is like fire, you can cook food on it, you can also burn down your house”—says the proverb. On the one hand, it allows for the regeneration of physical and mental strength of visitors, as well as provides funds for the economic development of the destination, but on the other hand, it contributes to a lot of damage to the geographical environment. The period of "stopping" of tourism during the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic allowed many areas to be relieved of the tourist traffic, which resulted in the observed revitalization of the natural environment, but also huge social and economic problems in destinations that are largely dependent on income from tourism. The rapid resurgence of tourism after the pandemic restored revenues but also caused many social tensions. The problem of overtourism returned, and residents protested, calling for "tourists to go home." The entire tourism system requires a thorough analysis of the complex consequences of its development. This book presents many challenges facing contemporary tourism. Its theoretical and practical aspects provide a useful knowledge base for both researchers studying changes in tourism and practitioners in the tourism services sector. The content also serves as an inspiration to search for optimal solutions aimed at the sustainable development of contemporary and future tourism.