Environmental Ethics for Tourism
Owing to the complexity of tourism, involving a variety of stakeholders,
it is subsequently difficult to talk of a homogenous environmental
ethic for this industry. However, in terms of establishing the
framework for stakeholders’ interaction with the environment, government
policy for tourism has a major influence. Referring to the development
of contemporary mass international tourism, one of the first
government policies was initiated by Spain’s General Franco in the 50s.
Based upon an instrumental ethic, General Franco’s Plan Nacional de
Estabilization of 1959, possessed an inherent policy of “crecimiento al
cualquier precio” (growth at any price). Focused upon a desire for
economic growth and modernization, the pursual of this policy was at
the cost of environmental destruction, ultimately leading by the 90s to
a decline in tourist numbers to parts of Spain as the environment was
perceived to have lost its quality.
As referred to earlier, the late 80s marked not only a watershed in
the conceptualization of human interaction with the environment, but
also in the goals of tourism development. Policies driven by economic
imperatives, divorced from the environmental costs of resource usage,
meant that destinations in a mature stage of development had become
increasingly aware of the need for an emphasis to be placed upon
conservation. For example, Holder (1988), while describing the range
of environmental problems that had resulted from the accumulative
effects of tourism development in the Caribbean, emphasized the need
for resource conservation because of communities’ economic dependency
on tourism.
By the 90s, the need for a conservation was also being emphasized
by other stakeholders in tourism. In one of the earliest public strategies
on sustainable tourism decided by different stakeholders, including
representatives of government, nongovernmental organizations, industry
and academia, the Globe’90 conference in Canada identified five
main goals (Fennell 1999). The first four related to aspects of development
and tourist experience, the fifth, to maintaining the quality of
the environment on which the previous four depended. However, such
calls for a conservation ethic in tourism, were not taking place in a
vacuum free from the context of international directives on development
policies in the wider world. Besides a realization that destruction
of nature was “bad” for tourism businesses, the recommendation for
the pursuit of sustainable development by the World Commission on
Environment and Development (1987), has had a major influence
upon directing development policy. The influence of the conservation
ethic of sustainable development upon an international policy for tourism
development was clearly illustrated by the end of the 90s. At the
second United Nations General Assembly Special Session held in New