Abstract
The world is changing and so too are our notions of sustainability, sustainable development and sustainable tourism. After pointing out how a small Montana community has changed over the last 125 years or so, I raise fundamental questions about what it means to be sustainable, and how limited conventional definitions of sustainable tourism are in the complex, fast changing world of the twenty-first century. And, as I note, these questions also face small rural communities in developing regions of the world. Rising complexity leads to accelerating uncertainty requiring us to rethink the mental models we use to survive in the world, and that is what this book is about—reframing conventional notions of sustainable tourism to something more useful and appropriate.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Loosely defined here as the study of how parts of the whole influence each other.
- 2.
A social-ecological system is defined by Andereis et al. as “an ecological system intricately linked with and affected by one or more social systems.”
References
Anderies, J.M., M.A. Janssen, and E. Ostrom. 2004. A framework to analyze the robustness of social-ecological systems from an institutional perspective. Ecology and Society 9(1): 18. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art18/
Butler, R. 2013. Sustainable tourism—The undefinable and unachievable pursued by the unrealistic? Tourism Recreation Research 38(2): 21–26.
Dryzek, J.S. 1987. Rational ecology: Environment and political economy. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kohl, J., and S.F. McCool. 2016. The future has other plans. Denver: Fulcrum Press.
Nkhata, A.B., C.M. Breen, and W.A. Freimund. 2008. Resilient social relationships and collaboration in the management of social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 13(1): 2. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art2/
Ostrom, E. 2007. Sustainable social-ecological systems: An impossibility? Presented at the 2007 Annual Meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being,” San Francisco, 15–19 Feb 2007.
Senge, P.M. 1990. The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organisation. New York: Doubleday.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McCool, S.F. (2016). Sustainable Tourism in an Emerging World of Complexity and Turbulence. In: McCool, S., Bosak, K. (eds) Reframing Sustainable Tourism. Environmental Challenges and Solutions, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7209-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7209-9_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-7208-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-7209-9
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)