Abstract
An island offers tremendous tourism potential: islands are imagined and real exotic getaways, adorned with palm trees, pristine white beaches and turquoise lagoons, and quite often, they are indeed refuges for exceptional fauna, flora and cultural life. Islands are land masses with areas ranging from less than 2 m2 to close to 1000 m2 and population ranging from none to almost a million. Islands comprise the equatorial classic 3S (sun, sand and sea) as well as harsh-climate high-latitude islands, and are sovereign states and parts of larger entities such as nation states or archipelagos. Due to their geographical limitations, however, islands turn out to be inescapable escapes with startlingly fragile environments where tourism-carrying capacity can easily reach its limits. So, on islands, tourists compete for scarce resources with local inhabitants. Considering the more than 100,000 islands around the globe, it is estimated that approximately 1 in 10 people in the world call these unique environments home. Islands also ‘attract not only tourists but also those who seek to study the effects of tourism’ (p. XII), as the editors of the convincing volume Island Tourism: Sustainable Perspectives point out.
Carlsen and Butler have assembled an interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed collection of 15 case studies, provided by political practitioners and distinguished tourism researchers from disciplines such as anthropology, geography, law, economics, planning, marketing and business. The volume continues a discussion that started in the mid-1990s, reflecting the options and limitations of island tourism from a sustainable perspective.
Tourism is the leading economic activity or, at least, a crucial source of foreign exchange earnings for many of the locations discussed and thus an essential element of development strategies for island communities. Unsustainable growth in tourism – often between the lines – is associated with mass tourism, while the volume’s underlying understanding features sustainable tourism as an industry that generates income while it is sensitive to its impacts on the environment and local culture. The volume is organized in three parts, addressing the ecologically, socially and economically sustainable perspectives of island tourism development.
Ecologically sustainable perspectives of island tourism address concerns such as competition for space and resources, protecting and preserving unique island environments and resilience to global climate changes. The question of biosecurity is raised by Julia Jabour’s case of Australia’s isolated Macquarie Island, a wildlife refuge in Antarctica tourism. The potential introduction of alien species to fragile island environments – rabbits, rats and mice in this case – may be regarded as a dreaded negative impact of island tourism. Quite the contrary, argues Jabour and calls tourism a ‘convenient environmental scapegoat’ (p. 18) in threats to biosecurity, since it was educational tourism that put ecological integrity on the agenda for Macquarie Island management. Malcolm Cooper and Patricia Erfurt-Cooper, in contrast, offer a critical evaluation of the label ‘ecotourism’ on the world’s largest sand island, Australia’s Fraser Island. The authors argue that natural attractions are used more as a means of selling the destination rather than ensuring environmental sustainability through tourism, for ‘The tourist actually consumes the environment rather than protecting it’. Heather Zeppel’s contribution on reef tourism in Australia’s Green Island provides an example of successfully managing sustainable tourism through regulatory and educational strategies.
A high-value, low-volume restricting strategy that tries to find a middle path between tourism promotion and maritime environmental conservation is discussed in the articles by Jithendran Kokkranikal and Tom Baum on the Lakshadweep Islands and by Susanne Becken, John Hay and Stephen Espiner on the Maldives. In recent years, the Maldives have linked environmental concerns of island destinations with global climate issues, such as rising temperatures and sea levels (though it remains to be seen whether the island nation will be able to maintain this leading position after recent ousting of President Mohamed Nasheed, a journalist and oceanographer who was particularly active in climate change matters). Already facing climate consequences, such as coastal erosion, flooding or coral bleaching, the Maldivian tourism industry responded with coping strategies such as wave breakers, elevated structures and coral-garden cultivation (p. 75), which may be conceived as both threat and opportunity for the tourism economy.
Tourism puts pressure on environments but can also be used to protect and preserve these environments – and may be the best prospect for income and survival of local communities. Yet, social interactions between hosts and guests with diverse cultural and religious backgrounds can be quite intense in island settings. Accordingly, socially sustainable perspectives of island tourism are put centre stage in the second part of the book. Based on the examples of three mostly Muslim Malaysian island communities, Fathilah Ismail, Brian King and Ranjith Ihalanayake, argue that hostile behaviour towards tourists reduces destination attractiveness. Accordingly, sustainable tourism development must consider values and perceptions of tourism by both the host society and the tourists. Janne Liburd and Jack Carlsen investigate controversial casino and gambling tourism in St Croix, in the US Virgin Islands, and in Australia’s Christmas Islands. In both the cases, the casinos have caused social disruption and exacerbated socio- economic differences. Like other contributions, this stresses the crucial importance of questions of local control and the benefits of a skilled local workforce and questions how expatriate ownership of tourism facilities impacts on the social sustainability of island tourism.
The value of local control also becomes obvious in Richard Butler’s analysis of the Shetland Islands, which were recently ranked as one of the most sustainable tourism destinations in the world. The abundant outdoor environment together with low visitor numbers and a lasting trend towards nature-related tourism as well as oil resources that have allowed a relatively high level of local control, and a general political emphasis on maintaining the traditional way of life, contribute to an optimistic prognosis for sustainable tourism growth. Violence is identified by Jonny Coomansingh as the most severe stumbling block to the development of a social sustainable tourism in Trinidad and Tobago. Such violence against tourists occurs especially during carnival celebrations, which basically serve as a pressure valve for the communities. However, conversely, Brent Moyle, Glen Croy and Betty Weiler suggest that festivals, markets and comparable events on Australia’s Bruny and Magnetic Islands offer a setting for managing host–guest interactions in a way that respects values and lifestyles of local communities, intensifying the tourist experience through social exchange and so contributing to positive tourism impacts and thus to sustainability.
Limited resources, remoteness from markets, a strong dependence on the mainland and transport and, consequently, significant economic leakage of profits as a result of extensive imports are some of the disadvantages island economies have to tackle when developing economically sustainable perspectives of their tourism industries, as explored in the book’s third section. Girish Prayag discusses Mauritius’ tourism rejuvenation strategies, regarded as exemplary for many island destinations in the rejuvenation stage: reorientation of tourist attractions, environmental enhancement and repositioning in the luxury segment. Enhancing the high end (a widely practiced way of controlling negative tourism impacts) in combination with a concentration on specific markets (to increase the length of stay, the spending and repeat visits) and/or diversification of the tourism product away from a classic 3S destination (typically associated with mass tourism) should ensure economic sustainability of Mauritius. Hiroshi Kakazu discusses the economic options of the Okinawa Islands, with their coral reefs and agricultural areas, and argues that tourism is not merely a service but a composite industry that includes local cultures, production sectors and entertainment. Consequently, the domestic production of goods and services should be expanded and imports reduced to counteract economic leakage in tourism.
The European Union recognizes the more than 100 islands in the Mediterranean as areas ‘which suffer from severe or permanent natural or demographic handicaps’ (p. 186), especially from being isolated from large markets. Here, Giovanni Ruggieri identifies potential regional cooperation as a promising approach towards sustainability. Gui Lohmann and David Ngoc Nguyen focus on transport, by which environmental, social and economic aspects can illustratively be linked: a typical stay by island tourists is rather short and thus puts additional pressure on transport infrastructure and, therefore, on the environment. Lohmann and Nguyen discuss the Hawaiian archipelago, which is characterized by territorial fragmentation and has to struggle with accessibility and the burden of transport costs. The development of economic, environmental, legal and political infrastructure aspects therefore has to be considered in order to achieve sustainable forms of tourism transport. A second article on the Maldives, by Mariyam Zulfa and Jack Carlsen, emphasizes that continued economic prosperity is inescapably linked to the protection of the natural environment in small island destinations. In the ‘segregated or enclave tourism’ practiced on the Maldives and Lakshadweep Islands, the one-island one-resort policy is linked to high investment costs, since the entire infrastructure (e.g. including desalination plants) has to be provided for each resort island. Zulfa and Carlsen show that carrying capacity that accounts for aspects such as solid-waste production and water supply is a useful instrument to control environmental impacts of tourism but can become ineffective when economic expansion demands dominate planning processes and circumvent regulations. The popular and mushrooming over-water bungalows, for example, are ‘artificially increasing the physical carrying capacity of resort islands’ (p. 220). For sustained development, the authors consider that a further expansion of tourism on the Maldives has to go hand in hand with nationwide conservation and monitoring measures.
The editors artfully introduce and conclude the volume, arguing that small islands are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of tourism and summing up the essential ingredients for the long-term sustainability of island tourism. Since restrictions and limitations seem to be unavoidable strategies if the carrying capacities of islands are to be met, adaptation to environmental change and political commitment to sustainability is essential. However, economic growth often takes priority over environmental and sociocultural concerns. The examples and analytical insights throughout this book exemplify how environmental, sociocultural and economic sustainability in tourism interact, reinforce or compete with each other. The volume is thus a rich and stimulating source for tourism researchers and students, policy makers, tourism professionals, development agents and island communities.