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Sustainable Development and Use of Our Natural Resources for Recreation and Tourism: The Ideal and the Reality. 2002 Idaho Governor’s Conference on Recreation and Tourism Nampa Civic Center May 2, 2002 Dr. Steve Burr
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Sustainable Development and Use of Our Natural Resources for Recreation and Tourism: The Ideal and the Reality 2002 Idaho Governor’s Conference on Recreation and Tourism Nampa Civic Center May 2, 2002 Dr. Steve Burr Director, Institute for Outdoor Recreation and Tourism College of Natural Resources, Utah State University
Part 2:Sustainable Development and Use of Our Natural Resources for Recreation and Tourism: The Ideal and the Reality • Conservation, Recreation, and Tourism • Tourism Impacts • Tourism and Community Development • Sustainability and Sustainable Development and Use • Sustainable Tourism Development (STD) • Obstacles to the Achievement of STD • Feasible Approaches and Best Chances for Success
Conservation, Recreation and Tourism • Broadly viewed… Natural Resource-Based Tourism is not viable without Conservation and Recreation. • Symbiotic relationship— the three mutually complement and support each other • Synergistic relationship— the whole is greater than the parts
Conservation, Recreation and Tourism • Conservation supports attractive and useful environments and destinations causing: • Designation and establishment of parks, preserves, and other protected areas; • Legal means to preserve and protect scenery and wildlands; • Resource management and protection; • Education and interpretive programs; • Clean and healthy environments.
Conservation, Recreation and Tourism • Recreation supports and encourages: • Travel; • Development of access to scenic locations for recreation; • Development of recreation resources, areas, facilities, activities, and services.
Conservation, Recreation and Tourism • Tourism causes the following to be made available: • Conveniences for the visitor— transportation and tours; • Food, lodging, hospitality, and other support services; • Economic incentives to finance conservation and recreation; • Political support for recreation and conservation from visitors (and locals?).
Conservation, Recreation and Tourism RECREATIONRefreshing Activitiy Fun Experience Pursued in “Free Time” Vacation Destinations CONSERVATIONBehavior designed to assure “wise use” and preservation of our history, culture, traditions, uniquely valued lands, and natural resources TOURISMCommercial Activity Supporting Travel
Positive Impacts: Promotes administrative and planning controls Implementation of environmental clean-up and restoration Allows for improvement and preservation Protects wildlife and plant species Promotes non-consumptive uses Negative Impacts: Over-crowding Over-development Maximizing visitation at expense of the natural resource Recreational impacts on wildlife and fragile vegetation Air and water pollution Crime and vandalism Souvenir collection What Impacts Do Tourists Have on the Environment?
Socio-Cultural Impacts of Tourism Tourist—Host Relationships & Interactions • Ethnic/Cultural differences • Language differences • Expectations • Time patterns • Spacial patterns • Intensity of development • Size of community • Commoditization • “Trinketization” Periphery Tourist Core Periphery
Stages of Community Tourism Development
Tourism Destination Life-Cycle Model: Form of Economic Succession for Communities in the Intermountain West • First Stage— Early on, local economies were heavily dependent on extractive uses of natural resources. • Second Stage— Communities closely situated to attractive outdoor recreation amenities attract increasing numbers of tourists, and ensuing proliferation of tourist-support businesses dominate the local economy.
Tourism Destination Life-Cycle Model: Form of Economic Succession for Communities in the Intermountain West • Third Stage— Many tourists who travel to experience the attractive outdoor recreation amenities perceive additional “quality-of-life” characteristics/attributes at a specific place, and move to small western towns establishing permanent residence.
Tourism Destination Life-Cycle Model: “footloose entrepreneurs” “equity migrants” “travel-stimulated entrepreneurial migrants” “amenity migrants” • These “amenity migrants” bring their own businesses or start new businesses. • Some are retirees, bringing income from retirement pensions, investments, and savings. • This builds demand for support services, fueling local economic activity and growth. • Extractive uses of natural resources and even tourism may become minor contributors to local economies at this stage of economic succession.
Negative Economic Impact of Tourism • Places new stress on existing infrastructure • Expanded police and fire protection, search & rescue, and medical services often needed • Other public services needed • Where does the tourist money go? • High-risk and seasonality of tourism enterprise • Under-employment and Unemployment
Negative Economic Impact of Tourism • Additional capital and maintenance costs for public amenities • parks, convention centers, recreation areas, libraries, museums, historic restorations • Increasing numbers of visitors means increasing local population • need for educational services, hospitals, housing, public welfare, and overall economic development • Tourism expansion demands greater quantities of land and other resources. • Competes with existing land uses and other economic development opportunities.
Tourism and Community Development • Tourism plays an important role in the process of community development, helping to ensure the protection and preservation of both environmental and community amenities. • Offers key opportunities for developing interactions within a community… leading to relationships between and among community members and allowing for the natural emergence of other community networks. • Can create a “new sense” of community pride among local residents.
Tourism as a Rural Development Industry Potential Benefits versus Potential Costs • Negative environmental and social impacts • Potentially exploitative tendency • Being approached with a sense of caution “Ill-conceived and poorly planned tourism development can erode the very qualities of the natural and human environments that attract visitors in the first place.” (Innskeep, 1991)
Tourism as a Rural Development Industry Critical Challenge: • To not degrade environmental resources nor negatively exploit local human and cultural resources, in order that these resources may be maintained for present and future generations. Sustainable Tourism Development, as a concept, is “one of the healthiest insights of tourism.” (Hunt, 1992)
Sustainability and Sustainable Development • Concept of “sustainability” recently associated with tourism development initiatives and efforts. (French, 1992; Long & Nuckolls, 1992) • “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987)
Sustainable Development • All development paths that are either environmentally benign or beneficial. • Tied to sustainable use-- careful and sensitive economic development is possible without degrading or depleting natural resources needed by present and future generations. • Promotes intergenerational responsibility.
Sustainable Tourism Development Involves management of all resources in such a way that “economic, social, and aesthetic needs [are fulfilled] while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity, and life support systems.”(Inskeep, 1991)
Sustainable Tourism Development “Remains viable over an indefinite period and does not degrade nor alter the environment (human and physical) in which it exists to such a degree that it prohibits the successful development and well-being of other activities and processes.” (Butler, 1993)
Sustainable Tourism Development Should follow ethical principles that “respect the culture and environment of the host area, the economy and traditional way of life, the indigenous behavior, and the local leadership and political patterns.”(Cronin, 1990)
Sustainable Tourism Development Interest in “protecting, using carefully and benefiting the human and cultural, as well as the natural heritage of an area, implying active participation and leadership by local people, organizations, and government.”(Inskeep, 1991)
Can Tourism Development Really Be Sustainable? Policy Endorsement Policy Implementation (the “Ideal”) (the “Reality”) • Difficult to “prove” sustainability • Better sense of what might ultimately be an unsustainable outcome
SustainabilityAn “Ideal” Balance of Capacities in Three Systems Economic Environmental Socio-Cultural
SustainabilityAn “Ideal” Balance of Capacities in Three Systems • Maximize Goal Achievement across the three systems at one and the same time through an Adaptive Process of Trade-Offs. • The more the three systems and goals converge, the more sustainable development becomes. Economic Environmental Socio-Cultural
Sustainability—The Reality Environmental Economic Socio-Cultural Political-Legal System
Sustainability—The Reality Economic Environmental Socio-Cultural Political-Legal System
Sustainability—The Reality Environmental Economic Socio-Cultural Political-Legal System
Sustainability—The Reality • Not possible to maximize all goals at the same time through an adaptive process of trade-offs. • Conflict almost always exists between and among inter- and intra-system goals. • As a result of values, choices are made as to which goals are more valuable and which should receive higher priority. • As a result, different development strategies assign different priorities to the systems and their goals.
Sustainability—The Reality • Concept of sustainable development provokes groups at different levels to set a wide spectrum of goals and then to reconcile them. • “It is this reconciliation or trade-offs implicit in sustainable development that has inspired much useful work since the early 1980s… [amounting] to a new renaissance in thinking in social welfare and development issues.” (Holmberg & Sandbrook, 1992)
There is No “Shortcut to Sustainability!” • Patterns of sustainable development must be built from the bottom up, showing what can be achieved at local levels and then working to disseminate positive experiences. (Holmberg & Sandbrook, 1992) • “Increased emphasis is being placed on those forms of tourism that are particularly sensitive to promoting and retaining the integrity of natural and socio-cultural environments.” (Swinnerton & Hinch, 1994)
Sustainable Tourism Development • There must be a balance between “a degree or type of development that will bring economic and other benefits to a community and the point at which that development starts to feed on rather than sustain the very elements at its basis.” (Cronin, 1990)
Criteria for Sustainable Development • Follow ethical principles • Involve the local population • Give the local population an element of control • Be undertaken with equity in mind (Cronin, 1990)
Some Principles of Sustainable Tourism Development • Low impact • Small in scale • Careful in progress • Appropriate and sensitive to the local natural and socio-cultural environment • Readily integrated into the existing social and economic life of the community
Operationalizing Sustainable Tourism Development • Define goals of STD for a destination. • Establish appropriate planning and management framework. • Select relevant indicators from a candidate list of environmental, economic, and socio-cultural criteria. • Measure and monitor these indicators. • Periodically analyze and assess indicator performance. • Determine whether original goals are being achieved. • Implement remedial action if necessary. Source: Weaver & Lawton, 1999
Candidate Sustainable Tourism Indicators • Environmental • Destruction or alteration of natural habitat by tourism construction • Amount of litter associated with tourism activities • Resource consumption associated with tourism • Economic • Revenues earned directly from tourism • Proportion of destination employment associated with tourism • Profitability of individual operations • Socio-Cultural • Number of resident complaints against tourism • Amount of crime directed against tourists • Number and condition of heritage structures and sites • Integrity of the local culture
Problems Encountered in All of These Steps • Sustainable tourism development goals influenced by ideological considerations; lack of common ground often evident. • Assuming goal consensus, necessary to define temporal, spatial, political, and inter-sectoral parameters within which to assess sustainable tourism. • Long-term planning discouraged by short term budgets. • Cannot take into account all external influences affecting the sector, many of which are unknown. • Tourism cannot be isolated from other natural resource uses.
For Sustainability Indicators... • Potential number of indicators within any particular destination is enormous. • Strategically difficult to monitor more than a few. • No definitive guidelines available to inform destinations as to which ones are most important. • Decision to include or exclude particular indicators is ultimately a subjective exercise, highly sensitive to context. • Little known about critical thresholds of sustainability that apply to each criterion, how they can be measured, and how often they should be monitored.
Spatial and Temporal Discontinuities Between Cause and Effect • Many of the impacts identified within a destination and/or within a specific time period actually have their causes in other areas or time periods. • Events within destinations may have consequences in other destinations and time periods.
Many Obstacles to Achieving Sustainable Tourism Development • Is achieving STD even possible and/or worthwhile? • If no effort is made at all, unsustainable outcomes are virtually guaranteed. • Sustainability indicators are just that, an indication, rather than an absolute confirmation, of sustainability. • New information on sustainable practices in tourism is continually being generated. • More appropriate to describe destinations as indicative of STD, rather than definitive.
Focus onAchieving Equity and Balance • Sustainable tourism development is determined largely by what “stakeholders” want it to be. • Through an informed, open, and participatory process for decision-making… • Creates empowerment and involvement… • Resulting in cooperative and collaborative action.
Sustainable Tourism DevelopmentPolicy Endorsement / Policy Implementation • Effective implementation appears to occur in highly interactive communities where local leaders from diverse special interest groups interact and in the process create a viable community field. • Main Task: Removing those barriers and constraints interfering with the natural tendency of community to develop allowing for the development of relationships and free-flowing interaction.
Ten Factors for a Successful Tourism Program Cooperation & Coordination Between Local Leadership, Business Persons, and Public Land Managers Widespread Community Support Leadership A Complete Tourism Package Support & Participation of Local government Strategic Planning Cooperation & Coordination Among Tourism Entrepreneurs Active Convention & Visitors Bureaus Travel Councils Access to Information & Technical Assistance Access to Financial Resources for Tourism Development
Develop a Widely Shared Vision Create an Inventory of Local Assets Build on Local Assets Minimize the Need for Regulations Meet the Needs of Both Landowner and Community Team Up with Public Land Managers Recognize the Role of Non-Profit Organizations Provide Opportunities for Leaders to Step Forward Pay Attention to Aesthetics Secrets of Successful Tourism Communitiesfrom Balancing Nature and Commerce in Gateway Communitiesby Howe, McMahon, and Probst, 1997
Best Chances for Success • From professionals and volunteers working in tourism development. • Following an approach that focuses on the principles of sustainable development in all development efforts and initiatives. • Facilitates resident involvement, participation in decision-making, and local control in development.
Best Chances for Success • Cooperative interaction can create: • networks both within and outside the community • roles for involved community members • shared experiences • opportunities for further community development • contributions to the general quality of life in a community
Tourism Planners & Developers Special Interest Groups Citizens Residents Elected Officials Marketers & Promoters Successful Rural Tourism Development Government Agencies Resource Managers Conservation Groups Businesses Media
A Perceived Quality of Life Amenity Values are values we place on the natural resource amenities of: • Clean Air and Water • Natural Landscapes • Scenic Beauty & Aesthetics • Wildlife and Habitat • Opportunities for Outdoor Recreation