Leisure and Recreation

Sustainability and the Greening of Leisure, Recreation, and Tourism

Sustainability has become a ubiquitous feature of leisure, recreation and tourism business and development strategies. Following the publication of the 1987 Bruntland report, ideas of sustainability—development that seeks a balance between economic growth, environmental protection and social equity—became widely used and began to inform discussions [Page 269]about the environmental consequences of economic growth. At the core of sustainable development is the notion that economic growth and environmental protection are compatible. Such a notion replaced the prevailing view that held that the economic logic of capitalism was inherently environmentally destructive, and that there might be limits to continuous economic growth and development with a more pro-growth and pro-technology stance.

Tourism is one of the largest industries in the world, and both contributes to global climate change and is impacted by it. Life cycle analysis tools are shedding light on the true environmental cost of tourist travel. One response to the hidden environmental, social, and economic costs of travel has been the proliferation of various types of ecotourism. According to the International Ecotourism Society, ecotourism is “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.”

The dominant approach to dealing with GCC impacts generated by industries such as tourism encourages voluntary efforts on the part of businesses and consumers to become ecologically efficient and sustainable, and downplays calls for government regulation and mandates. Increasingly, various responsible travel websites are using life cycle analysis tools to rate the sustainability of tourist packages. One popular voluntary measure is purchasing carbon offsets, which in theory is meant to cancel out the emissions generated by activities like air travel by directing money to programs that reduce emissions elsewhere, such as planting trees in Africa. This approach has been criticized because it may enable people to feel less guilt about their environmental impact and does little to change the behavior causing the problem in the first place. A mantra of the corporate responsibility discourse is that going green is a smart, win-win proposition that helps both the environment and business profits. Time will tell if corporate greening is a genuine business strategy or a form of greenwashing. There are indications that corporate responsibility and greening will need to be helped along by responsible government action.

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