Changing Paradigms and Global Change: From Sustainable to Steady-state Tourism

The field of Tourism Studies has given substantial attention to the issue of sustainability since the late 1980s. However, despite the plethora of publications, conferences, and strategies that deal with sustainability, tourism is arguably less sustainable than it has ever been. The reasons for this are several-fold and include the relative weakness of sustainability research in tourism as an epistemic community; economic, institutional and political barriers; and the inherent problems of the concept in terms of its capacity to marry social, environmental and economic indicators, and the addiction to economic growth. Following an outline of the expansion of tourism's contribution to global environmental change the article provides a re-conceptualization of sustainable tourism from an ecological economics perspective. From this approach sustainable tourism development is understood as tourism development without growth in throughput of matter and energy beyond regenerative and absorptive capacities. Steady-state tourism is, therefore, a tourism system that encourages qualitative development but not aggregate quantitative growth to the detriment of natural capital. In the case of tourism, more does not mean better, and growth does not mean development. Tourism policy implications are also examined. It is concluded that while the political-economic indications for such a transformative approach are not immediately encouraging, the environmental necessity is stronger than ever.