گردشگری پایدار : پژوهش و واقعیت

Social and environmental impacts, responses and indicators are reviewed for the mainstream tourism sector worldwide, in five categories: population, peace, prosperity, pollution and protection. Of the ∼5000 relevant publications, very few attempt to evaluate the entire global tourism sector in terms which reflect global research in sustainable development. The industry is not yet close to sustainability. The main driver for improvement is regulation rather than market measures. Some tourism advocates still use political approaches to avoid environmental restrictions, and to gain access to public natural resources. Future research priorities include: the role of tourism in expansion of protected areas; improvement in environmental accounting techniques; and the effects of individual perceptions of responsibility in addressing climate change.

Tourism researchers first turned their attention to social and environmental issues almost four decades ago (Allen et al., 1988, Brougham and Butler, 1981, Cater, 1987, Cohen, 1978, Farrell and McLellan, 1987, Liu and Var, 1986, Smith, 1977, Turner and Ash, 1975 and Young, 1973). Research using the specific term sustainable tourism, however, commenced barely two decades ago (May, 1991 and Nash and Butler, 1990). The first decade yielded compilations (Coccossis and Nijkamp, 1995, Hall and Lew, 1998, McCool and Moisey, 2001, Stabler, 1997 and Swarbrooke, 1999), and basic frameworks from backgrounds in tourism (Butler, 1999, Clarke, 1997, Hall and Butler, 1995, Hughes, 1995 and Hunter, 1997), economics (Driml and Common, 1996 and Garrod and Fyall, 1998) and environmental management (Buckley, 1996). The second decade yielded a number of reconceptualisations, and a series of critiques including Sharpley, 2000, Casagrandi and Rinaldi, 2002, Gössling, 2002, Liu, 2003, Saarinen, 2006 and Lane, 2009. As we enter a third decade, this review takes stock of progress by assessing the scope, focus and outcomes of academic research publication in sustainable tourism, against the practicalities of sustainability in the commercial tourism industry. Its basic premise is that the key issues in sustainable tourism are defined by the fundamentals of sustainability, external to the literature of tourism research. This premise relies on the axiom that both the tourism industry, and sustainability, are real-world phenomena. Therefore, this review does not attempt to deduce internally-generated research themes from analysis of bibliometric patterns in sustainable tourism publications. Instead, it constructs externally-generated themes by applying the key components of sustainability to tourism, and uses these to evaluate the sustainable tourism literature. This yields two outcomes. Firstly, it uses the results of research to assess the current sustainability of the tourism industry. Secondly, by comparing relative research effort against industry significance, it identifies priorities for future research. This is a review specifically of the tourism research literature. Research in science, environment, resource management, global change, human health, economics and development policy is also relevant to sustainable tourism, but for reasons of space and focus, is not detailed here. The literature of tourism is large, >150,000 items in total, with ∼5,000 relevant to sustainable tourism (CIRET, 2012). Because of space constraints, this review can cite <250 individual items, i.e. <5% of the relevant literature. It largely omits topics which have been reviewed recently, such as water consumption and climate change (Gössling et al., 2011 and Weaver, 2011). It examines the mainstream commercial tourism industry: recreation, ecotourism and responsible tourism are considered only where relevant. It first defines a framework for evaluation, under five main themes. It then compares the tourism research literature against that framework. For each theme, it summarises outcomes of all relevant research to date, supported by a representative selection of critical citations. Finally, it compares research effort and results against real-world progress and significance. The five themes used for the evaluation framework are: population, peace, prosperity, pollution, and protection. The rationale is as follows. The fundamental concern of sustainability is that aggregate human impacts threaten the survival of humans and the ecosystem services on which they depend (Pereira et al., 2010 and Persha et al., 2011). Impacts have grown, ultimately, because biological evolutionary pressures promote continuing human reproduction and competitive consumption. Sustainability requires modifications to human society so as to reduce its aggregate impacts. Impacts depend on: (a) the size and distribution of the global human population; (b) its social organisation, including economy, governance and civil society; and (c) the consumption, pollution, and/or protection of nature as a result of such social organisation. World population is a key predictor of current and future human impact on the planet. Peace is a global measure of successful social organisation and governance. Prosperity is a measure of economic activity, and a surrogate for per capita resource consumption. Pollution indicates increases in environmental impact. Protected areas indicate reductions. Each of these factors can be changed through technological, individual or political means; and each of these means can generate either gains or losses in sustainability. Technological advances can reduce resource consumption and waste generation locally, even though they have increased both globally. Market-based measures can modify individual behaviour either to increase or reduce environmental footprints. Governments introduce laws, policies and incentives which can either reduce or increase pollution, environmental protection and social equity. The intentions and outcomes of any such measures are commonly difficult to deconstruct or predict. Organisations may promote measures based on individual choice or social responsibility in order to disperse opposition and forestall regulation (Beder, 1997, Buckley and Pegas, in press, Honey, 1999, Nunez, 2007 and Wagner, 2011). In the tourism sector, Saarinen, 2006, Nelson, 2010 and Yasarata et al., 2010, showed that industry advocates use the jargon of sustainability and community to strengthen power bases and legitimise current unsustainable practices.

All five of the key themes identified earlier are critical to sustainability; but the influence of tourism, interest by the tourism industry, and research effort to date, differ between them (Table 1). Except for a few unusual enterprises (Buckley, 2010), the tourism industry focuses strongly on economic aspects, with attention to social and environmental aspects confined to legal compliance, political manoeuvring, and marketing and public relations (Buckley, 2009b, Hall, 2010, Lane, 2009 and Weaver, 2009). Tourism research in environmental journals addresses parks and pollution aspects, but few scientists study tourism (Buckley, 2011a). Peace and population issues are barely addressed (IIPT, 2011). Research topics significant for sustainable tourism were identified several decades ago (Buckley, 1996, Cohen, 1978 and May, 1991). These topics have changed little (Table 2), save for the addition of climate change. There has been extensive publication during this period, but progress has been mixed. In addition, much of the most relevant research is not in tourism journals. In its initial struggle to gain recognition as an independent discipline, tourism research became somewhat self-referential. It could now make greater use of related research in other fields. Cross-disciplinary publication is commonplace in tourism economics, and in tourism and climate change, but not in tourism and environmental management (Buckley, 2011a). The tourism industry does not pay much direct attention to research (Buckley, 2008b and Lane, 2009). If academics can understand what the industry does and why, however, then that information contributes to government policy and regulation which improve sustainability. There is, however, a critical caveat. Whilst academics see information as having intrinsic value and incorruptible importance, most of the world sees information mainly as a means to gain power, fame or money. The products of research become tools of advocates, politicians and entrepreneurs, no matter how hard researchers strive to remain independent. This is particularly prevalent in contested domains such as sustainable tourism. Sustainability is shorthand for human and planetary future, yet tourism research treats it as a small subdiscipline. Tourism journals routinely publish rankings of research outputs, yet only one such ranking includes sustainability (Park, Phillips, Canter, & Abbott, 2011); and that is based only on publications in top-tier tourism and hospitality journals, ignoring other social, environmental and sustainability journals. Interest in sustainability amongst tourism researchers seems to be as limited as it is amongst tourism industry advocates, enterprises and tourists. Large-scale social and environmental changes are altering the world in which tourism operates, but few researchers are attempting to grapple with these changes. With this in mind, Table 2 also attempts to pick some immediate priorities for future research. One longstanding concern (Butler, 1991 and Butler, 1999) is to develop quantitative sustainability indicators for the tourism sector. The most difficult component is to establish environmental accounting measures, so this remains a priority for research. Measurement and management of all types of tourism impact remain important. One particular current priority, however, is the ability of tourism to bring about large-scale change in land use, by generating financial and political support for conservation. This is increasingly urgent as the world’s nations attempt to increase their protected area estate from 10% to 17% of land area over the next decade, in line with the internationally agreed Aichi targets, as a buffer against climate change. Finally, responses to impacts continue to include regulatory, corporate and technological measures, but individual reactions to responsibility in light of global change seem to form a particularly promising field for future research. Sustainability is as important in tourism as in any other sector of the human economy, and equally difficult to achieve (Casagrandi & Rinaldi, 2002). As noted by Sharpley (2009), there is “limited evidence of its implementation in practice.” As long as the language of international politics is couched in terms of sustainable development, however, then the terminology of sustainability, as well as the practicalities of social and environmental management, will remain critically important in tourism research as well as reality. This review identifies some immediate priorities for academic research aimed to improve the sustainability of the tourism industry in reality.