The Global Political Economy Of The Environment And Tourism

This book examines how local and global environment-society relations play out in coastal communities dependent on tourism for economic survival. It analyzes the consequences of social and economic policies on remote areas and makes a case for studying the role of environmental values in global environmental governance.

Why has political ecology been assigned so little attention in tourism studies, despite its broad and critical interrogation of environment and politics? As the first full-length treatment of a political ecology of tourism, the collection addresses this lacuna and calls for the further establishment of this emerging interdisciplinary subfield. Drawing on recent trends in geography, anthropology, and environmental and tourism studies, Political Ecology of Tourism: Communities, Power and the Environment employs a political ecology approach to the analysis of tourism through three interrelated themes: Communities and Power, Conservation and Control, and Development and Conflict. While geographically broad in scope—with chapters that span Central and South America to Africa, and South, Southeast, and East Asia to Europe and Greenland—the collection illustrates how tourism-related environmental challenges are shared across prodigious geographical distances, while also attending to the nuanced ways they materialize in local contexts and therefore demand the historically situated, place-based and multi-scalar approach of political ecology. This collection advances our understanding of the role of political, economic and environmental concerns in tourism practice. It offers readers a political ecology framework from which to address tourism-related issues and themes such as development, identity politics, environmental subjectivities, environmental degradation, land and resources conflict, and indigenous ecologies. Finally, the collection is bookended by a pair of essays from two of the most distinguished scholars working in the subfield: Rosaleen Duffy (foreword) and James Igoe (afterword). This collection will be valuable reading for scholars and practitioners alike who share a critical interest in the intersection of tourism, politics and the environment

This book investigates and considers the urgent political, social, and economic challenges that confront society and tourism. It attempts to look at what is threatening society, and makes suggestions on what the impact will be and how tourism will be changed to integrate with the new socio-economics of a newly emerging society with its novel peculiar challenges and opportunities in a post-energy era. The book draws on the views of leading thinkers in tourism and considers a broad range of issues from multidisciplinary perspectives facing the tourism industry for the first time in one volume: dwindling energy, new technology, security (like war and terrorism), political economy, sustainability, and human resources. By critically reviewing these social and economic challenges in a global scale, the book helps to create a comprehensive view of future tourism in the unfolding and challenging society of the third millennium. This innovative and significant volume will be valuable reading for all current and future tourism professionals.

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.

Providing the first comprehensive analysis of the economic, social and political interrelationships between global environmental change and tourism, this book integrates social and physical science perspectives to give an in-depth exploration of this topical issue.

The concept of the green economy has now entered mainstream policy debates and been endorsed by a range of United Nations and other organizations. The Rio+20 UN conference specifically drew attention to the green economy approach in the context of sustainable development to move away from business-as-usual practices, act to end poverty, address environmental destruction and build a bridge to the sustainable future. It is increasingly recognized that the tourism sector can make a major contribution to the green economy through more sustainable practices, climate change mitigation and ecotourism. The role of tourism sector will continue to be crucial in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda too. However, there are ambiguities about how tourism and allied industries can maximize their contribution to human well-being and ensure environmentally sustainability, embracing issues of political economy, geography and business ethics. In this context, this book provides consensus about what the green economy entails, what role tourism can play in a green economy, early responses from many countries, on-going and emerging research initiatives that will enable tourism’s transition to a green economy. The chapters address three key themes: understanding the Green Economy concept and the role of tourism; responses and initiatives in greening tourism; and emerging techniques and research implications. A wide range of case studies from around the world and in different contexts is included to demonstrate the extent of the challenge and range of opportunities for the tourism industry.

Poverty alleviation is high on the global policy agenda, its importance being emphasised by its place as the first of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. As a potentially significant source of economic growth in developing countries, tourism may also play a major role in poverty reduction and alleviation under the right circumstances. The incorporation of tourism into development policy and Poverty Reduction Strategies has special poignancy for those Least Developed Countries where natural resources exist to support a tourism industry and there are limited development alternatives. This book offers a holistic, explicit and detailed introduction to the relationship of poverty and tourism within the context of developing countries. The book is divided into distinct sections, progressing from an evaluation of the key concepts of poverty, tourism and development; to the causal factors of poverty; to the mechanisms of how tourism is being implemented in policy and practice to reduce poverty and finally to an analysis of the relationship between tourism to poverty alleviation in the future. The adopted analytical approach of the key themes is multi-disciplinary, incorporating tourism studies, human geography, political economy, economics, development and environmental studies. It integrates examples and original case studies from varying geographical developing regions including Africa, South Asian and East Asia and the Pacific, to lend practical insights into tourism’s role in poverty alleviation. The text will be of particular interest to higher education students from tourism studies, geography, political economy, environmental and development studies, and sociology backgrounds. It will also be of relevance to government and policy makers, alongside those who have a more general interest in poverty alleviation.