Debates about the costs and benefits of nature-based tourism have continued for thirty years since Edward Abbey first raged against the forces of what he termed "industrial tourism" in his book of essays Desert Solitaire (1968). And since that time, tourism (including cultural, theme park, historical, recreational and nature-based) has emerged as the world's single largest industry (Hall 1994). The Wharton Economic Forecasting Association estimated that the total gross output for tourism and travel in 1993 was $3.2 trillion (US), roughly 6% of global gross national product (Lundberg, et al 1995). The tourism industry employs roughly 127 million people, generating approximately 20,000 jobs for every $1 million (US) of revenue (Lundberg, et al 1995). That places the environmental and social impacts of tourism and recreation development centrally in analyses of the future trajectory of the global economy in the twenty first century.
Much of the recent discussion of the potential of nature-based tourism and recreation has hinged on competing definitions of "sustainable development." Sustainable development is currently one of the trendiest and most contested terms in current discourse on the future trajectory of economic and social development (Redclift 1987). One conceptualization of sustainability seeks to sustain the existing industrial treadmill of production through the management of scarcity in key exchange-value ecosystem elements (Schnaiberg 1980). Another less conservationist conceptualization of sustainability seeks to preserve intact ecosystems for the benefit of non-human species. Between these two poles of deep ecological sustainability, and shallow economic sustainability, lies a third conceptualization that perhaps offers the greatest hope for altering current economic, political, and cultural socioenvironmental dynamics in favor of ecological integrity and social equity.
That more broadly compelling conceptualization of sustainability seeks to preserve part of the natural environment for social uses that are not purely economic in character (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994). While still thoroughly anthropocentric in nature, such a conceptualization of sustainable development places far greater emphasis on ecosystem use-values than the existing exchange-value dominated treadmill of production (Schnaiberg 1994, Daly 1996). These alternative social uses include a variety of recreational activities, as well as somewhat less tangible benefits such as aesthetic appreciation, relaxation, and transcendental rejuvenation. Despite the lower emphasis on purely economic uses of natural resources manifest in this conceptualization of sustainability, the alternative social uses included in this view can be easily construed as being integral to a nature-tourism and recreation-based economy (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994). Such "alternative use-based" economies can be found throughout the world, with many local, regional and national economies largely dependent on these uses of their environments for economic survival, especially those that are more peripheral (Wallerstein 1974) to the transnational economy. As the service sector has continued to represent an expanding share of global economic flows, the nature-based tourism and recreation industry has accounted for the bulk of service sector expansion in many less developed nations, as well as in the internal peripheries of many developed nations (Ghali 1977).
Those who live in less developed areas can not afford to preserve local ecosystems for the enjoyment of others without some economic means by which to support their own material well-being (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994). Many urban and suburban residents tend to take a utopian view of nature, as they see their connection to the natural environment as primarily recreational. These often wealthier worker-citizens view their relationship to ecosystems in a use-value context, as the ecological withdrawals and additions stemming from their own production and consumption roles have become decreasingly socially visible to them (Schnaiberg 1980). In contrast, many rural residents tend to take a more utilitarian view of nature, as they see their connection to the natural environment as primarily habitational and instrumental. These less wealthy worker-citizens often view their relationship to eco-systems in a more exchange-value oriented context, as the withdrawals and additions stemming from their production and consumption roles have remained quite socially visible to them. The problem for preservation- minded wealthier urban and suburban dwellers is, how to get rural residents to be more protective of ecosystems. The problem for survival-minded poorer rural dwellers is, how to get urban and suburban residents to be more protective of rural economies.
One person's playground is another person's resource pool. Nature-based tourism and recreation is one possible way to meet the recreation and preservation needs of urbanites and suburbanites, and the economic needs of "ruralites." Nature- based tourism offers "employment and income to local communities while allowing the continued existence of the natural resource base" (Whelan 1991: 4). But the economic needs of urbanites require extraction of ecosystem elements from the domain of rural residents, thus undermining rural ecologies, and ultimately rural economies. In fact, it is precisely because extraction occurs in more remote rural areas that urban and suburban residents are hidden from their own impacts on natural systems, allowing them the luxury of utopian views of nature. The development of nature-based tourism and recreation economies is one method of meeting local economic needs, with lower costs to both, local, and extra-local ecosystem users, but one that often directly conflicts with those largely urban and suburban- driven extractive enterprises which typify many non-agricultural rural economies.
But, although tourism and recreation development is far less destructive to the environment than the expansion of extrac-tion and the unmodified industrial treadmill of production, economies based on such alternative social uses of ecosystems are not environmentally benign. Unmitigated expansion of tourism and recreation economies tends to destroy the very ecological bases upon which they depend, unless such growth is carefully managed (Ryan 1991). In addition, there are a number of negative social impacts associated with tourism and recreational uses of natural systems which may not be "socially sustainable." The primary utility of the ecologically and socially-based conceptualization of "sustainability" implicit in nature-based tourism and recreation development is in bringing alternative social uses of ecosystems into the societal accounting in cost-benefit analyses of rural development options, in an attempt to strike a balance between ecological integrity and local economic necessity (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994, Gould 1997).
A key unique feature of a tourism and recreation-based economy is that it is most often tied to "place" (Logan and Molotch 1987). In an era of rapid transnational economic globalization that is decreasingly defined or constrained by geographic locations, nature-based tourism and recreation offers an alternative local economic base that requires geographic specificity (Gould, et al 1995, 1996). While manufacturing, service, and even extractive enterprises are increasingly able to rapidly change locations to seek out and exploit the changing competitive advantages of places globally (Barnet and Cavanagh 1994), tourism and recreation is far more grounded in location. That is not to imply that the whims and tastes of large tourism and recreation investors and consumers do not seek out new and different locations as overdevelopment erodes the attractiveness of specific locales. It does, however, imply that to a significant extent, communities dependent on tourism and recreation development are somewhat less likely to be vulnerable to job blackmail threats to move the industry elsewhere (Kazis and Grossman 1982, Gould 1991). That fact makes it less necessary for these communities to engage in the global bidding-down of wages, taxes, and regulations (environmental, health and safety, and labor protections) to attract and retain transnationally mobile capital investment (Athanasiou 1996). Tourism and recreation development therefore provides a means by which to partially circumvent the global competition amongst places, and its pressures to provide the most attractive possible business environment to maintain a local economy. Beaches, forests, mountains, wetlands and climates are less likely to be moved-out than are factories and financial centers.
Nature-based tourism and recreation development increases or creates local exchange-values for ecosystem elements utilized within the ecosystems they are a part of, rather than removed from those ecosystems and transported to non-local markets as extracted commodities. The degree to which these exchange-values are protective of ecological integrity varies greatly, from nearly pristine "wilderness" ecosystems to cosmetic aesthetic view scapes. The social construct of "Wilderness" requires that little or no human impacts on local ecosystems are evident, despite the fact that they will inevitably be present. The social construct of attractive nature "scenery" may include much evidence of human intervention, including agricultural activities, towns, and even airborne particulate enhanced sunsets. Scenery-based nature tourism is therefore more tolerant of human intervention than is wilderness-based nature tourism, as long as that socially visible intervention is not perceived as "pollution" by nature consumers (Gould 1993).
Tourism and recreation development also creates exchange-values in increased environmental degradation of undeveloped regions through increased exploitation of these ecosystem elements utilized in-place. The degree to which nature-based tourism and recreation development degrades local and regional ecosystems also varies greatly, from golf course construction on filled wetlands, to strip malls of motor hotels and go cart-tracks, which may overrun the environments upon which their locational advantages were initially based. Tourism and recreation development therefore may also reduce local use-values in less developed environments as they are degraded, while simultaneously increasing use-values to non-local visitors in protected environments.
The natural resources presented by local environments will often shape the type of tourism and recreation that is developed, from backcountry backpacking to cross-country motor racing. Local and regional sociopolitical factors also shape the nature of tourism and recreation development, from legalized gambling in deserts and Native Reserves, to restrictions on access to hiking trails in fragile wilderness areas. Transportation and access to local ecosystems from major population centers also plays an important role in determining the extent and form of environmental disruption incurred (Gould 1997). Therefore, the socioenvironmental basis upon which tourism and recreation- based local economic growth is attracted to, and sustained in, a specific ecosystem determines the type and extent of local environmental degradation and protection, by redistributing pre-established and/or newly generated local use- and exchange- values amongst a variety of new and old stakeholders. These local and extralocal stakeholders will engage in political and economic conflict and coalition to gain and maintain access to local ecosystem elements, and to protect ecosystem elements from more or differently environmentally destructive economic development. Each new tourism and recreation development initiative will inevitably threaten some local constituency's exchange-values in local ecosystems, as well as some local constituency's use-values in those ecosys-tems. It will also present the possibility of new exchange-values for local and extra- local entrepreneurs, some of which may be destructive of the previous or coinciding exchange- and use-values. The diversity and security provided by local economies is likely to play an important role in determining local receptivity to new nature- based tourism and recreation development schemes.
What is distinctive of nature-based tourism and recreation development, in contrast to other industrial and/or extractive forms of development is that tourism and recreation converts extra-local environ-mental use-values into local environmental exchange-values. This serves to create a local economic stake in the promotion, cultivation, and servicing of extra-local environmental protection concerns and extra-local recreational interests. A primary difficulty is that these use-values will be varied, and often conflict with each other. What is also distinctive is the creation and/or cultivation of local exchange-values in protection of local environments. These may be based partially on existing local use-values of local environments, such as hunting and fishing. They may also cultivate new local use-values (perhaps for more altered environments), like golfing or downhill skiing.
The extent of local environmental protection that emerges from a tourism and recreation-based alteration of local and extra-local exchange- and use-values in local environments will depend largely on the type of exchange- and use-values developed in local economies, and extralocal capital investors and their constituencies, the nature consumers. It will also depend on the sheer volume of tourism, the type of recreational activities, and the capacity of local environments to survive these new social demands. The ability of tourism and recreation-based development to withstand competition for local ecosystems from more environmentally destructive industrial and extractive developments will be largely dependent on the depth and breadth of local exchange-values and use- values in nature-based tourism. Depth and breadth of local investment in existing exchange- value utilization of ecosystems is likely to depend on the type of economic benefits derived in terms of wages, long- term security, benefits packages, and the provision of local public funds and services (Daly 1996). Therefore, the socioeconomic impacts of nature-based tourism development will be important in determining the likely social sustainability of such enterprises, as alternative configurations of local exchange- and use-values based on other forms of economic opportunity may present themselves, with greater ecological costs, but perhaps also greater socioeconomic benefits.
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