Sustainability and Shifting Paradigms in Tourism

              © PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. ISSN 1695-7121
Vol. 13 N.o 6. Special Issue Págs. 1297-1299. 2015
www .pasosonline.org
Introduction
Sustainability and Shifting Paradigms in Tourism
Eduardo Fayos­‑Solà*
Ulysses Foundation
Something important changed the world 50 years ago. It was in the late 1960s and throughout the
1970s when the realization of fast approaching limits to growth came down like a hammer, striking
a strong blow on business­‑as­‑usual
world political and socio­‑economic
paradigms. Of course, classical
economists like Malthus had already sounded a warning 150 years before. Then, scientific and tech-nological
advances postponed the inevitable. Finally, the Club of Rome thinkers (Meadows, Meadows,
Randers, and Behrens, 1972) and two oil crises dispelled the illusion of limitless growth in a small
planet, with the controversy being retaken afresh in the 21st century (Meadows, Randers and Meadows,
2004; Stern, 2006; Bardi, 2011).
Meanwhile, tourism was well in its way to becoming a key global activity. The landmark of 100 million
international arrivals a year had been reached by 1965 and the mass tourism paradigm, inspired in
the prevailing rules for industrial production (standardized products at low marginal cost), had taken
deep roots. However, the complex interaction between limits to growth and tourism global figures
remained generally ignored at both the domestic and international levels (Fayos­‑Solà
and Jafari, 2010;
Fayos­‑Solá,
Alvarez and Cooper, 2014; Fayos­‑Solà,
2016 forthcoming).
In fact, it was not really until the late 1980s that some voices were raised expressing concern about the
growing impacts of tourism activities. They first referred to mainly the socio­‑cultural
negative impacts at
micro­‑destination
level, although the environmental large scale impacts (on the Mediterranean shores,
for example) were highly visible by then. But it was only in 1995 that the first Charter for Sustainable
Tourism was born from the World Conference on Sustainable Tourism, held in Lanzarote, Canary
Islands, Spain, in 1995, undoubtedly inspired by the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development, the Rio Earth Summit of 1992. (WCST, 1995; UNEP, 1992).
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development proclaimed 27 principles, without any
specific mention of tourism as a global activity with many potential and actual environmental and
developmental impacts. However, principles 5 and 6 (international cooperation for development),
principle 7 (international efforts preventing environmental degradation), and principles 10, 22 and
27 (inclusiveness of all citizens), could be read by the UN Member States as clearly affecting tourism
policy. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has received 166 Member State
ratification signatures to date.
In this framework, the Lanzarote Charter for Sustainable Tourism of 1995 proclaimed 18 “principles
and objectives” specifically referring to the ethical, environmental, socio­‑cultural
and economic impacts
* Dr. Eduardo Fayos­‑Solà,
president@ulyssesfoundation.org has extensive experience in Tourism Policy and Governance,
with over 25 years of service at the United Nations World Tourism Organization ­‑­‑as
Director for Europe and Executive
Secretary for the UNWTO Knowledge Network­‑­‑
and at the Government of Spain ­‑­‑as
Director­‑General
for Tourism Policy
and Spanish Representative for Tourism at the European Government in Brussels. He is a UNWTO Ulysses Laureate, a
Fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, and has been Professor of Economic Policy at the University
of Valencia since 1988. He has led research and policy implementation missions in over 100 countries worldwide. He is the
Founding President of the UNWTO Themis Foundation and the architect of the TedQual Certification. His professional
interests include destination management and public­‑private
policies, focusing on tourism for development, policy and
governance, and science, technology and innovation.
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. 13 N° 6. Special Issue. Diciembre 2015 ISSN 1695-7121
1298 Sustainability and Shifting Paradigms in Tourism
and effects of tourism. It was definitely expected at the time that the Charter would set a direction and
a roadmap for tourism policy and governance institutions and norms, and it can definitely be stated that
it has played a role in the theoretical and practical discussions on tourism sustainable development of
the last two decades. However, actual translation of the Charter into norms and laws is what is most
missing, perhaps in a way similar to the 1992 Rio Declaration and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 (UN,1998).
Looking back without anger, the time may be ripe for a new appraisal of tourism paradigms and
a shrewd framework for governance and policy. This special issue of Pasos is intended as one more
step in such a direction. It has been debated that the traditional mass­‑tourism
paradigm is no longer
the right entrepreneurial fabric for action. A tourism “New Age” paradigm has been the predominant
governance prototype in both governments and private businesses for some years now. This paradigm
considers new characteristics (i) in the tourism demand and supply (much more fragmented, to the
point of “one customer­‑one
segment”), as well as (ii) in the ancillary support systems (highly evolved
because of technological innovation), and (iii) in the economic, socio­‑cultural,
and environmental
scenarios (lip­‑service
to sustainability playing an important role here). However, a close review of both
academic literature and norms of governmental legal bodies involving tourism reveals that too little
has changed when envisioning intelligent futures and devising roadmaps for effective sustainable and
inclusive development (Fayos­‑Solà
et al, 2014).
Many prospective analyses of tourism simply spell growth rates and numerical targets, even up to
2030 (UNWTO, 2011). This is doubtlessly a business­‑as­‑usual
guide to short­‑term
inter­‑country
and
interregional analyses. Similarly, Tourism Competitiveness Reports (WEF, 2015) are now yearly produced
for “travel and tourism”, with an index measuring a set of factors and policies for the sustainable
development of these activities and their role in contributing to the “development and competitive-ness”
of States. However, when reviewing the set of components invoked for such “development and
competitiveness” (enabling environment, tourism policy, infrastructure, and resources), the disruptive
effects of greenhouse gas accumulation and ensuing climate change, resource exhaustion, biodiversity
degradation, adverse cultural impacts, game­‑changing
technologies and procedures, and governance
paradigm shifts are clearly missing in the analysis. This appears as notably insufficient, and even
more so when tourism is simultaneously seen as a fulcrum for long­‑term
inclusive and sustainable
development, already contributing some 10% of world GDP.
It is considered here that envisioning a new long­‑term
tourism governance paradigm should begin with
the appraisal of alternate “future of tourism scenarios”, some of them falling in the “intelligent futures”
subset. The key 21st century strategic dilemmas concerning environmental sustainability, inclusive
development, and participatory governance cannot be absent when considering the future of tourism.
International organizations, and very especially those in the United Nations group, have priority access
to key data, information, knowledge, and wisdom regarding global trends. Thus, when recommending
frameworks for tourism policy and governance, the concerned organizations would need to be extremely
proactive in the building of institutional mechanisms for (i) scientific and technological innovation,
(ii) socio­‑cultural
and economic transformations, and (iii) actual participatory governance. Of course,
governments, the private sector and civil society should very importantly be included in this process.
Actual practice in tourism has been somehow too distant from knowledge management institutions
and even from participatory governance institutions. Sustainability is just but one of the resulting areas
of concern. This business practice isolation has been maintained in the era of neoliberal economics, but is
not tenable in the long­‑term,
especially as tourism is increasingly interwoven in the social fabric. In this
context, sustainability is, essentially, a prerequisite in the global governance musts, ways and means.
Thus, the participation of governments, the private sector, and civil society in the making of tourism
long­‑term
strategies and tourism policy frameworks must be somehow formulated (or reformulated). It
has become a crucial element when considering sustainable development. This special issue of Pasos
preliminarily deals with some of the theoretical and practical aspects of such “reformulations”.
In this framework, the articles of Madrid Flores, Pulido Fernández, and Alves and Ramos Nogueira
present an ample, panoramic view of the state of affairs in the sustainable development of tourism,
including an appraisal of achievements attained and threats and opportunities ahead. Then the papers
by Falcón and Pérez Márquez, Cardona, Cuéllar­‑Molina,
Casademunt, and García­‑Cabrera
refer more
specifically to the issues of sustainability­‑concerned
governance. Other papers are specially focused on
cultural sustainability involving tangible and intangible heritage, such as those authored by Cetinkaya,
Oter, and Padin. Environmental sustainability is directly addressed by Orgaz Agüera and Morales, as
well as by González Mantilla, and Neri. Finally, papers by Torres­‑Solé,
Sala Ríos and Farré Perdiguer,
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural. 13 N° 6. Special Issue. Diciembre 2015 ISSN 1695-7121
Jose Antonio Fraiz Brea 1299
as well as by Moncada Jiménez, Sosa Ferreira, Martínez, Beltrán Pérez and Dominguez­‑Estrada,
and
by Cruz Jiménez, Serrano Barquín and Vargas­‑Martínez
present specific case­‑studies.
All in all, it is hoped that this special issue of Pasos, in the 20th anniversary of the first Charter for
Sustainable Tourism (WCST, 1995), will constitute a useful additional input in the right direction:
That of envisioning intelligent futures and the role of tourism within, while simultaneously helping
bridge theoretical and practical governance initiatives in tourism in the quest towards a sustainable
and inclusive development.
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