Taylor and Francis Tourism and Sustainability

'If unequal opportunities are large within many countries they are truly staggering on a global scale', so concludes the World Bank’s 2006 World Development Report. It is a global unevenness within which the barriers to immigration of Third World migrants to wealthy First World nations go ever higher, whilst the barriers to travel in the reverse direction are all but extinct. So how exactly can tourism contribute to narrowing this glaring inequality and gap between the rich and the poor? Are ever-expanding tourism markets – and the new, responsible, forms of tourism in particular – a smoke-free, socio-culturally sensitive form of human industrialisation? Is alternative tourism really a credible lever for lifting poverty stricken countries out of the mire of global inequality, setting them on the right track to ‘development’?

Tourism and Sustainability critically explores and challenges what have emerged as the most significant universal geopolitical norms of the last half century – development, globalisation and sustainability – and through the lens of new forms of tourism demonstrates how we can better understand and get to grips with the rapidly changing new global order. The fourth edition has been extensively updated and includes a new chapter on climate change and sustainable tourism.