Tourism and the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity

The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity is one of the leading pieces of international environmental law. Although tourism is not explicitly mentioned in the Convention tourism has increasingly become featured in the decisions of the Conference of Parties to the Convention, including the development of a specific set of guidelines on biodiversity and tourism. The paper reviews the role of tourism in the Convention and examines the extent to which tourism-related decisions have been implemented by countries via an analysis of the national reports that are submitted to the Convention Secretariat. The results indicate that the decisions remain relatively poorly implemented given the seriousness of biodiversity decline and significance of tourism. The paper concludes that greater effort needs to be given to evaluating such international conventions and their affect on tourism policies and practices, as well as better understanding the implementation gap at both an instrumental and paradigmatic level.