Parallel universes: sustainability and silos in

Parallel universes: sustainability
and silos in impact assessment and
sustainable tourism
Angus Morrison-Saunders
•  Murdoch University, Australia
•  North West University, South Africa
a.morrison-saunders@murdoch.edu.au
Michael Hughes
•  Curtin University, Australia
M.Hughes@curtin.edu.au
about Angus Morrison-Saunders ...
•  Associate Professor in Environmental
Assessment, Murdoch University, (75%)
•  Extraordinary Professor in Environmental
Sciences and Management, North West
University, South Africa (25%)
•  co-Editor of Impact Assessment and Project
Appraisal journal (since 2008)
•  25 yrs research on effectiveness of impact
assessment (Does it work? How?)
•  Increasingly focused on 'sustainability assessment'
Bond A, A Morrison-Saunders & R Howitt (eds) 2013
Sustainability Assessment Pluralism, Practice & Progress,
Routledge, 276pp
Background to this presentation
Evolution of sustainability understanding has
occurred separately but similarly in different
disciplines:
•  environmental impact assessment (EIA)
•  tourism
Purpose
How is the EIA field tackling sustainability
that might usefully inform tourism
and vice versa?
We focus on similarities, trends and
points of divergence…
Proliferation of names/acronyms
choose a noun, place it before field name…!
Environmental impact
assessment EIA
Eco-tourism
nature-based tourism
cultural tourism
geo tourism
cruise-ship tourism
SIA social impact assessment
HIA health impact assessment
SEA strategic environmental assessment
CEA cumulative effects assessment
RA risk assessment
sex tourism
Sustainable tourism
TIA?!
Sustainability assessment
sustainability seems to be a unifying theme(?)
Simple definition of sustainability
assessment…
A process that directs decisionmaking towards sustainability
extrapolated from: Hacking, T and P Guthrie 2008 A Framework for
Clarifying the Meaning of the Triple Bottom-Line, Integrated, and
Sustainability Assessment. EIA Review, 28: 73-89
This is an inclusive definition:
•  about any human decision
• 
i.e. not restricted to new development projects
undergoing EIA
Can be applied within sustainable tourism(?)
Sustainability thinking leads to the
question…
What is to be sustained, for whom
and over which time frame?
'what' = environment? development?
tourism attraction? tourist operator?
'who'
= equity issues (winners & losers):
intra-generational equity
'time'
= long-term, e.g. future generations:
inter-generational equity
Sustainability thinking leads to the
question…
What is to be sustained, for whom and
over which time frame?
'what'
'who'
'time'
= environment? development?
understanding
tourism attraction? tourist operator?
& managing
trade-offs is
= equity issues (winners & losers):
intra-generational equity
vital for
sustainable
= long-term, e.g. future generations:
development
inter-generational equity
Conceptualising sustainability in
impact assessment – an evolution
in expectations
•  Minimising negative impacts of proposals
(may be only environmental)
•  Delivering positive social, environmental and
economic outcomes
•  Contributing to healthy and resilient socioecological systems
triple bo*om line (separate ESE impacts to be minimised ) Ecosystem services
Evolution in
sustainability thinking
SocioSocio-political
systems
Economy
Governance
(but some researchers
are yet to make
this journey)
contribu6ng to healthy socio‐ecological systems, resilience Example of minimising impacts
Browse LNG precinct strategic assessment 2010
•  separate EIA and SIA – no integration
•  62 documents in total – 7,928 pages!
Minimising tourism impacts
thinking…
Adapting the principles of sustainable development,
ST was initially viewed as a resolution for negative
tourism impacts and the long term viability and
wellbeing of destinations.
- Lu & Nepal 2009, p12
Lu J and S Nepal 2009, Sustainable tourism research: an analysis of papers
published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism,
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 17:1, 5-16
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669580802582480
(but this thinking
persists…)
aims to identify and examine
the means that can
•  enable responsible tourism
to generate a range of
benefits for destinations,
•  minimize the negative
impacts of tourism, and
•  achieve the sustainable
management of
destination resources.
The imperative for positive action
[e.g. through impact assessment]
Minimization of negative effects is not enough;
assessment requirements must encourage positive
steps towards greater community and ecological
sustainability, towards a future that is more viable,
pleasant and secure.
- Gibson (2006)
Gibson R 2006 Sustainability
assessment: basic components of
a practical approach, IAPA, 24(3):
170-182
Traditional minimising impacts approaches
are not enough…
The usual environmental
assessment objective is merely to
mitigate significant adverse effects.
There is no long term hope in that.
Mitigation can only slow our slide
over the precipice when what we
need is to reverse direction.
Gibson R (2013) Why Sustainability Assessment?, in Bond A, A MorrisonSaunders and R Howitt (eds) Sustainability Assessment Pluralism, Practice
and Progress, Routledge, pp3-17
[understanding impacts of tourism is still
important…]
Sustainable tourism presents a paradox.
At one level sustainable tourism is a success given
the concept’s diffusion among industry,
government, academics and policy actors.
Yet, it is simultaneously a policy failure given the
continued growth in the environmental impacts
of tourism in absolute terms. (Hall 2011, p649)
Hall M 2011 Policy learning and policy failure in sustainable tourism
governance: from first- and second-order to third-order change?,
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 19(4-5): 649-671
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2011.555555
Sustainability as
balancing ESE…
The final aim of
sustainable
development is to
find a balance
between economic,
social and
environmental
factors.
García-Melón M, T Gómez-Navarro
& S Acuña-Dutra 2012
A combined ANP-delphi approach
to evaluate sustainable tourism,
EIA Review, 34: 41–50
But 'balancing' means trade-offs!
•  problem when economy & environment
considered to be opposition
•  core goal of EIA is to seek balance between these
competing ends
–  usually this occurs behind closed doors
•  balancing is not the path to sustainability
•  for progress to sustainability we must find ways of
making gains on all fronts
•  sustainability assessment provides a forum and
framework for explicit attention to trade-offs
Gibson R, S Hassan S Holtz J Tansey & G Whitelaw, 2005 Sustainability
Assessment Criteria, Processes and Applications, Earthscan
Sustainability is not about balancing, which presumes a focus on
compromises and trade-offs. Instead the aim is multiple reinforcing gains.
Trade-offs are acceptable only as a last resort when all the other options
have been found to be worse.
Gibson R 2006 SA: basic components of a practical approach, IAPA, 24(3): 170-182
Balancing does not deliver sustainability in
tourism…
…one of the cornerstones of the sustainable
tourism policy paradigm is that of “balance”
…
Yet the continuing contribution of a growing tourism
industry to environmental change raises a clear
question as to whether sustainable tourism can
actually be achieved via a so-called “balanced”
approach that seeks to continue to promote
economic growth. (Hall 2011, p660)
Hall M 2011 Policy learning and policy failure in sustainable tourism
governance: from first- and second-order to third-order change?,
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 19(4-5): 649-671
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2011.555555
The notion of balancing all goals in ST was also
thought to be unrealistic, and, therefore, trade-offs
in priorities became inevitable.
… As a result, operationalizing current knowledge
about ST to move toward the goal of sustainability
became the focus of tourism research. The most
recent position is one of convergence which suggests
that ST is a goal which is applicable to all forms of
tourism regardless of scale.
- Lu & Nepal 2009, p12
Lu J and S Nepal 2009, Sustainable tourism research: an analysis of papers
published in JST, JST, 17:1, 5-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669580802582480
Towards systems thinking…
New knowledge of the way in which systems
function suggests that nature and human activity
should be viewed and studied, not separately but
as integrated, complex adaptive systems, also
termed social-ecological systems (SESs) (Farrell &
Twining 2005, p109)
Farrell B and L Twining-Ward 2005, Seven Steps Towards Sustainability:
Tourism in the Context of New Knowledge, JST, 13(2): 109-122
…and resilience thinking
The bottom line for sustainability is that any
proposal for sustainable development that
does not explicitly acknowledge a system's
resilience is simply not going to keep
delivering the goods (and services).
The key to sustainability lies in enhancing
the resilience of social-ecological
systems, not in optimizing isolated
components of the system.
Walker, B & D Salt (2006) Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems
and People in a Changing World, Island Press, London, (p9)
tourism and resilience thinking …
Protected area tourism is a growing trend worldwide.
…Traditional assessment methods tend to focus on
current conditions using sustainability indicators that
are often poorly chosen…
Here we present a novel approach to investigating
the impacts of protected area tourism on communities
by framing them as a social-ecological system
and adopting resilience assessment principles.
(Strickland-Munro et al 2010, p499)
Strickland-Munro, J.K., Allison, H.E. and Moore, S.A. (2010)
Using resilience concepts to investigate the impacts of
protected area tourism on communities. Annals of Tourism
Research, 37 (2). pp. 499-519
on tourism and the new systems thinking …
… this leads to the unhappy realisation that present
approaches to tourism serve students and
researchers poorly, providing no more than a
partial explanation with which to work. To manage
human activity within ecosystems it must be
acknowledged that as a complex system of
people, land and ideas, sustainability concepts are
themselves forever evolving, adapting to site and
regionally specific conditions, and they can never be
cast as universal. (Farrell & Twining 2005, p110)
Farrell B and L Twining-Ward 2005, Seven Steps Towards Sustainability:
Tourism in the Context of New Knowledge, JST, 13(2): 109-122
Similar evolution of sustainability
understanding is happening in the impact
assessment field …
Slootweg R & M Jones 2011 Reslience thinking improves SEA: A discussion
paper. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal 29:263-276
Other trends in evolution of
sustainability thinking in tourism and
impact assessment
•  shift in focus from public sector to private sector
[e.g. Lu and Nepal 2009]
•  shift in focus from single tourism/EIA project sites
to the surrounding community or region
• 
• 
collaboration; intra-generational equity [e.g. Liu 2003]
pluralistic nature of sustainability [e.g. Bond et al 2013]
•  increasing realisation of need for new governance
structures (extending beyond normal tourism/EIA
project boundaries) [e.g. Hall 2011]
Conclusions on the
sustainability journey for impact
assessment and tourism
•  both fields have evolved in similar ways with respect
to understanding of sustainability
•  but little evidence of cross-over between them…
Breaking out of the silos…?
…to enable researchers from varying educational
and intellectual backgrounds to work together in a
more harmonious and effective fashion, an
interdisciplinary approach should be adopted in
researching sustainable tourism where synergies
between different disciplines are developed to
produce a more holistic synthesis. (Liu 2003, p472)
Liu Z 2003 Sustainable Tourism Development: A Critique,
JST, 11(6): 459-475
The inter-disciplinarity challenge
… although the journal [i.e. JST] has presented a
wide range of disciplines, the journal appears to
be multidisciplinary rather than
interdisciplinary. Inter-disciplinarity occurs when
at least some of the independent, intervening and
dependent variables in a specific hypothesis being
tested are derived from the specialized knowledge
of different disciplines (Lu and Nepal 2009, p14)
Lu J and S Nepal 2009, Sustainable tourism research: an analysis of papers
published in JST, JST, 17:1, 5-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669580802582480
THANK YOU!
Questions…?
Discussion…?
What is the potential for enhanced interdisciplinarity in tourism in the interests of better
realising the goal of 'sustainable tourism'?