Death by a thousand cuts: governance and environmental trade-offs in ecotourism development at Kangaroo Island, South Australia

In the wake of the Brundtland Report's articulation of the concept of sustainable development (1987), ecotourism has been promoted as an optimum way to achieve sustainable development in the tourism sphere. Ecotourism, as a subset of sustainable tourism, is touted as a win-win endeavour – a high-yield, low-volume strategy is often pursued in the hope of achieving good economic returns for local communities while simultaneously creating fewer negative environmental impacts than other economic development options. However, the concept of sustainable development contains the tensions of an oxymoron as the conservation implied in "sustainability" conflicts with the growth and resource use implied in "development". In an era where market imperatives dominate, this results in "trade-offs" between requirements for environmental conservation and demands for greater economic growth through tourism. This paper narrates the story of governance and the development approval process for an ecolodge on Kangaroo Island (KI) in order to explore the nature of such trade-offs. Evidence suggests that the requirements of environmental protection are "traded off" in the pursuit of tourism development and the income and employment it provides. Is sustainability possible when such incremental development, in fact, results in "death by a thousand cuts"? 慢性摧残:南澳大利亚的袋鼠岛生态旅游发展中的政策治理和环境权衡 在布伦特兰可持续性发展的概念报告(1987)中,生态旅游被促销成旅游圈中达到可持续性发展的最佳方法。生态旅游,作为可持续旅游的一个子集,被兜售为双赢最佳局面-一种为了为当地社区达到好的经济收入,同时舍弃其他经济发展选择而创造较少的负面环境影响,来追求高产小容量的战略。但是,可持续性发展的概念中包含和暗示了可持续性和发展中需要的能源利用和增长之间的冲突和矛盾。在市场迫切需求下,这导致了环境保护的要求和通过旅游来达到更多经济增长的需求之间的"权衡"。该文章叙述了袋鼠岛生态的政策治理和发展批准过程,为了来探讨以上提到的权衡的性质。证据指出在追求旅游发展和旅游提供的收入和就业机会中环境保护的要求往往被忽略到。问题是在不断的发展中事实上导致了"慢性摧残",而在这种情况下可持续性仍是可能的吗? Keywords: sustainable tourism developmentplanning approval processestourism governancetrade-offsecolodge developmentKeywords: 可持续旅游发展规划批准过程旅游政策治理权衡生态发展 Notes 1. When the SOL opened its doors on 9 June 2008, it hosted visitors for a minimum two-night stay at a tariff of $900 per night twin share. 2. In the 2006–2007 and 2007–2008 budget cycles, the SATC allocated $1 million for infrastructure for the SOL (Mark Blyth, personal communication, SATC, September 29, 2008). 3. I have examined the policy context and planning approval process for the SOL more fully in a book chapter (CitationHiggins-Desbiolles, 2011). 4. In fact, on its website, the SOL advertising material appears to imply a national park location: "In March 2008 the world-class Southern Ocean Lodge on Kangaroo Island opened as South Australia's new icon. The dramatic coastal national park location, architectural integrity, locally influenced cuisine and personalised interpretive adventures ensures this new entrant immediate success as an international destination of choice" (http://southernoceanlodge.com.au/about.asp). 5. SOL's "environment fund" could have then been used to rehabilitate this degraded site and thereby clearly earned the SOL a reputation for corporate environmental responsibility if this alternative site had been selected.