Linking tourism, the environment, and concepts of sustainability: setting the stage.

The tourism and recreation industry is at a crossroads in its development. Now one of the world's largest industries, it is increasingly confronted with arguments about its sustainability and compatibility with environmental protection and community development. Consideration of tourism, the environment, and concepts of sustainability should consider four key challenges: (1) a better understanding of how tourists value and use natural environments; (2) enhancement of the communities dependent on tourism as an industry; (3) identification of the social and environmental impact of tourism; and (4) implementation of systems to manage these impacts. THE CHALLENGE The tourism and recreation industry is confronted with serious and difficult choices about its future. The decisions made now will for decades affect the lifestyles and economic opportunity of residents in tourism destination areas. Many of these decisions are irreversible because once communities lose the character that makes them distinctive and attractive to nonresidents, they have lost their ability to vie for tourist-based income in an increasingly global and competitive marketplace. One option is to continue the road of the past, focusing on delivering the service and retail sectors that have provided the bulk of economic benefit to local communitiesólodging, transportation, food and retail salesówithout considering the emerging concerns about the industry. This option is based on assumptions about stability in values and preferences of travelers, and it delays answers to vital questions about the tourism product, appropriate scale and type of development, sustainability, and hosts' quality of life. These assumptions are questionable in an era of rapid social change where the future is no longer a straight-line projection of the past. Worldwide, tourism is undergoing fundamental change, from the experiences and settings travelers demand to the regulations governments impose to protect the environment. Signs of these shifts are everywhere, from tourism industry statements on the value of the environment (Cook and others 1992) to the demand for "ecotourism. " This transformation of demand and values leaves the industry no alternative other than to pursue a different, yet difficult, courseóone that builds upon the key questions of purpose, objectives, values, and strategies. Decisions about tourism development are difficult. The fundamental questions they implyósuch as the visions we have for our communities, how changes brought about by development will impact these visions, and how the community can absorb such changesóhave largely been ignored in the past. These decisions are controversial because they will prevent or diminish some traditional uses of natural resources and affect the people who have or who might have benefited from those uses. Powerful economic forces entrenched in the current direction are reluctant to open dialogue. The decisions are essentially judgments reflecting divergent value systems and how those value systems will be integrated. Our clients, primarily the public, are communicating through changes in tasties and preferences and, consequently, they are demanding that the industry pursue sustainability and care of the environment. We need to systematically explore the linkage that exists, whether recognized or not, between tourism, the environment, and sustainability. To begin that exploration, I will briefly review the significance of sustainability and the environment and the questions that implies for tourism researchers. CONCEPTS OF SUSTAINABILITY As we humans become more aware of our impact on the Earth and its life support systems, we increasingly look for examples of economic and community development other than unconstrained growth. Some have argued that gross national product or per capita income are incomplete measures of well-being. These measures may not accurately portray the distribution of economic benefits among people, they do not faithfully capture important quality of life factors, and they do not measure the temporal or social distribution of existing and anticipated costs and benefits of resource development programs. Many argue for the development of "sustainable" economies as the new guidepost to deal with issues of growth, economic and community development, and environmental protection. Sustainable growth and natural resource development will help communities use natural resources more prudently and sensitively than in the past and ensure their continued survival. Sustainability contains the appeal of an attractive model for action but is difficult to implement practically or operationally. Sustainability is often associated with such terms as "sustainable development," "sustainable management," "sustainable agriculture," "sustainable forestry," and "sustainable tourism. " In the tourism and recreation context, it is frequently associated with discussions of "ecotourism" and "nature-based tourism" (Boo 1990; Whelan 1991). Sustainability has become an attractive ideal for both scientists and activists, but operational details, objectives, or actions provided by advocaties are scarce. Dixon and Fallon (1989) conclude that the sustainability debate involves "how to pursue the goal and how to measure progress toward it. " Sustainability, as Dixon and Fallon note, was originally a biophysical concept that is now being applied in a social and policy context, contributing to confusion about what is to be sustained and for whom. For example, by sustainability do we mean sustaining physical outputs, such as board feet of timber or room occupancy, or do we mean the ecological patterns and processes that maintain naturally occurring ecosystems? Or by sustainability are we concerned with the ongoing social, political, and cultural processes that give communities character and individuals security? Gale and Cordray (1991) defined eight approaches to the concept of forest sustainability, then in 1994 expanded this to nine (table 1). Gale and Cordray portray the discussion about sustainability as answers to four defining questions: What is to be sustained? Why sustain it? How is sustainability measured? And what are the politics? One of their approaches emphasizes the economic sustainability of natural resource-dependent social systems. This is a narrow approach, however, and does not address other relationships communities have with natural resources that make them dependent on these resources, such as access to forests for recreational, educational, and spiritual purposes. A related approach, also defined by Gale and Cordray, is the sustainability of human benefits that flow from natural resources. Again, this approach is narrowly focused on specific product benefits. Often, discussions of sustainability are presented within the context of stability, particularly about communities (defined in a territorial versus an interest sense). We generally want our communities to be stable and predictable and to provide a sense of belonging. Sustainability goes beyond economic considerations and biophysicial issues; it must deal with important concepts of social order, such as hierarchy, territory, and norms (Burch and DeLuca 1984). We must understand how tourism development may impact the distribution of wealth or power, may affect land uses and zoning laws, and may interject new behaviors or institutions. We must discuss the acceptability of tourism-based interventions in the normative social order: What do these changes mean for community stability? And we must consider factors affecting a community's capacity to deal with such interventions. In other words, how do the type and intensity of tourism-induced disturbances affect our social world? Sustainability definitions also frequently speak to intraand intergenerational equity and option maintenance. The tourism industry receives substantive criticism about the distribution of jobs and income (Barrett 1987; Smith 1989). While job quality encompasses more than wages and monetary benefits, inequities in income are a major concern that residents hold about tourism development (Martin and McCool 1992). Nearly 58 percent of the adult Montanans participating in the Martin and McCool (1992) study agreed that tourism industry jobs are low paying, and over 55 percent disagreed that their household standard of living was higher because of tourist expenditures. What is an equitable distribution of options and income? Sustainable tourism allows visitors to enjoy an attraction, community or region with a volume and impact in such a way that the local culture and environment are unimpaired (Hill 1992). Strictly speaking, tourism and recreation use always lead to some level of impairment in natural systems. The question is primarily how much change is acceptable. Hunt (1993) argued that the tourism industry should care both for visitors and for the places they visit: "the communities in which we live. " Clearly, researchers view sustainability as more than physical commodities from natural ecosystems. Despite the extensive discussion about sustainability since the 1987 report from the World Commission on Environment and Development, which popularized the issue, few answers have been found. Entering sustainability-based management is essentially a value judgment, a decision that says that current management is inadequate or inappropriate. Sustainability is a concept decisionmakers can use to assess the consequences of actions on human communities. A human focus is deliberately taken here because it is the human population that places values on social structure, cultural values and traditions, economic opportunity, and ecosystems and their species. Maintenance of ecosystems and the protection of individual species are human-based values and, therefore, can be described from only a human viewpoint. Human communities are impacted in a variety of ways by tourism, including social structure and