Managing Tourism - Sustainability & Ecotourism

Geography: Cambridge International GCSE (2027 Exams), topic 9.3.7

Sustainability and Ecotourism

There have been increased efforts to make tourism more sustainable. Ecotourism is one way of doing this.

The Brundtland report (1987) says that sustainable development is:
'Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'.
(including social, economic and environmental factors).
Sustainability operations need to be aware of present and future consequences.
Sustainability is not easy to achieve, especially in places in the world that attract 1000s of tourists each year.
The economy depends on these tourists keeping on coming.

One way of making tourism more sustainable is flying less to reduce pollution levels.
This means that we should move away from the current trend of lots of short weekend breaks in favour of fewer, longer holidays.
To reduce leakage and make local economies more sustainable, we should use non-MNC hotels.

Ecotourism is tourism directed to places that need looking after because they are ‘at-risk’ environments (e.g. corals or rainforests).
This kind of tourism educates tourists and encourages them to benefit local projects.
Ecotourism locations either have preservation rules (allowing no changes) or conservation rules (non-damaging change is allowed).

Tours and hotels are run by local people.
Preservation areas like national parks may be created.
E.g. the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya. The Masa Conservancy run part of the park. They are a local not-for-profit group made up of local Maasai people.