1 The Rio and Rio + 10 summits In 1989, the United Nations expressed deep concern at the ‘serious degradation of the

Box 2.1 The Rio and Rio + 10 summits In 1989, the United Nations expressed deep concern at the ‘serious degradation of the

global life-support systems’ (Resolution 44/228) and convened the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. It was attended by 178 governments including 120 heads of state.

The purpose and content of the conference were to ‘elaborate strategies and measures to halt and reverse the effects of environmental degradation in the context of strength- ened national and international efforts to promote sustainable and environmentally sound development in all countries’.

The immediate results – the Rio Declaration, non-binding treaties on climate change 13111

and biodiversity, forest principles, Agenda 21, and meagre financial commitments – fell far short of the envisaged aims of the conference. Most of the treaties were non-binding, the declarations were vague enough to please everyone, and the commitment of resources was paltry (US$2.5 billion compared with an estimated cost of programmes of US$600 billion a year). Despite its size, the travel and tourism industry was not included as a separate item on the conference agenda.

A year before the conference, Maurice Strong, the UNCED chair, appointed Swiss billionaire Stephan Schmidheiny to promote the international business community’s stand- points on environmental issues. Schmidheiny formed the Business Council on Sustainable Development (BCSD). Carothers describes the BCSD as a coalition of some fifty multi- nationals, including some of the worst polluters on the planet, whose ‘goals were predictable: “voluntary” rather than legislated reduction in toxic emissions, the right to corporate privacy and wholesale support for “free trade”’ (1993: 14–15).

References to the over-consumption of the rich countries were removed from treaties, mention of corporate conduct was watered down, the poorest countries barely had a say, and, despite objections from all the environmental groups in attendance, the conference was used to endorse the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

In September 2002 the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (also known as Rio + 10) was held in Johannesburg, South Africa. Along with the International Chamber of Commerce, the BCSD formed an initiative called Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD) whose aim was to ‘ensure maximum participation from the world business community’ (BASD, 2001) in the preparation for and execution of the summit. Part of this preparation was the collection of narrowly chosen examples of good corporate citizenship, a tactic which Corporate Watch refers to as ‘greenwash’ (2001: 1). Before the conference, Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) declared that:

Since Rio unsustainable development has continued and there has been a dramatic failure to implement the (already insufficient) commitments made. Governments have promised to address the reasons for this failure before Johannesburg. FOEI is appalled that action on the real causes, such as neoliberal economic globali- sation and the excessive influence of corporations on policy have not been taken.

(FOEI, 2001) FOEI called for the conference to commit itself to regulated action rather than volun-

tary action on corporate accountability, environmental rights, ecological debt, trade justice and environmental governance and to recognise the crucial role of the precautionary principle (FOEI, 2001).

20 • Globalisation, sustainability, development

This contest is well illustrated by the differing views of the proponents and critics of the Brundtland Report and definition. Protagonists of the report point out that it incor- porates the essential principles of intra-generational and inter-generational equity and that it persuaded many governments to endorse the notion of sustainable development. Its critics would argue that it contains inbuilt assumptions about the need for continued expansion of the world economy and that it failed to stress the radical changes in lifestyles and society that would be required to overcome the problems inherent in the western model of development.

The second important point is that, in addition to acknowledging and assessing the different interpretations of sustainability, we are also interpreting the debate over sustain- ability in a broader context. This provides for a more free-ranging discussion, allowing us to consider the ways in which different ideas of sustainability are used, for example, to sustain profits in the tourism industry (Chapter 7), or are used by social classes to retain distinctive holidays (Chapter 5), or are used by ‘host’ communities to exclude outsiders (Chapter 8).

Sustainability, then, is a concept charged with power. We will be turning to the notions of ideology and hegemony a little later in order to help in the exploration of tourism and sustainability. The critical questions must remain: Who defines what sustainability is? How is it to be achieved? And who has ownership of its representation and meaning? It will be argued that, for the greater part, the answers to these questions are found in the First World: in businesses, governments, transnational institutions, scholars, envi- ronmentalists and new socio-environmental organisations.

Sustaining profits

Arguably, global economic restructuring and development are the most pertinent factors in the study of globalisation. Indeed the motor behind global economic change is the need for the growth of capitalism – new opportunities, new markets and, for tourism, new destinations – in other words the imperative for sustained growth and profitability. It is necessary to outline the most important features of global economic change before looking in more detail at why these changes have occurred and how they are reflected in contemporary tourism development.

The first feature has been a rapid growth in the world market, a process of inter- nationalisation that has resulted in the emergence of a global economic system (though it is necessary to contextualise this process as an uneven and unequal one, as we argued above). This is most clearly reflected in the expansion and reorganisation of the global financial market with the emergence, for example, of a global stock market. Economic globalisation is also reflected in ‘footloose’ capital and the growth of less nationally regulated industrial, banking and commercial sectors, a process that is also clearly repre- sented in the global tourism industry’s principal economic sectors with mergers and buy- outs between international airlines and hotels. It is a process that has been pursued fanatically through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services by the promotion of liberalised free trade by First World governments and that has been dominated by global agencies such as the WTO/OMC. We shall return to this critical agenda in Chapter 9.

A second feature is the relatively rapid First World de-industrialisation, with an equally rapid growth in the service sector. De-industrialisation has been necessitated by the long term fall in manufacturing profit margins in the advanced capitalist economies (Daniels et al., 2001; Lash and Urry, 1987), which have been forced to compete with the more cheaply manufactured goods in the so-called ‘newly industrialising countries’ such as the little tigers of Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan).

Globalisation, sustainability, development • 21

On the other hand, there has been a dramatic increase in service sector industries and varying degrees of reorientation in the First World to so-called service-sector-based economies. This is perhaps best understood as part of an ongoing process involving the international division of labour at a global scale. These shifts also provide important clues to the nature of attendant changes in the consumption of services (such as holi- days), a grasp of which is essential for understanding the growth and development in the First World consumption of tourism.

Third, and very much interrelated with globalisation and the international division of labour, capitalism has increasingly penetrated the Third World and ‘integrated’ or drawn these countries into a global capitalist system. Some commentators argue that there are simply no viable alternatives to capitalism and it is inevitable that, given the right condi- tions, capitalism will finally triumph as a single global economic order (De Soto, 2001;

13111 Easterly, 2001; Fukuyama, 1992). Consequently there has been a considerable increase in the number of countries which are implicated in capitalist production (Lash and Urry, 1987: 6). We shall return to the consequences of economic interdependency at various points in this book, and in the next chapter will consider some of the parallels that have been drawn between cash crops (such as bananas, coffee or minerals) and tourism. It is important to note here that, while we are arguing that tourism must initially and prin- cipally be understood within the context of capitalist development and the dynamics of capital accumulation, it is nonetheless necessary to avoid deterministic reasoning and acknowledge that such development is locally conditioned and differentiated (Bianchi, 2002; Massey, 1995b). In other words, the form tourist development takes and the respective roles of relevant agents (from ‘local’ people and entrepreneurs to external companies, central and local governments, and lending institutions) is not predetermined and will vary greatly from place to place.

Post-Fordism provides one way of capturing the processes of global restructuring and the qualitative changes in the organisation of both production and consumption (Allen, 1992), changes which have been alluded to above and will be expanded upon below. The regime known as Fordism (taking its name from Henry Ford’s assembly lines making mass-produced cars) characterised the major capitalist economies for the best part of the twentieth century. It expresses how economies of scale are ensured by goods which are mass-produced and mass-consumed. Under conditions of post-Fordism (or neo-Fordism), however, which many commentators suggest represent the current economic regime, there is a qualitative shift from mass-production and consumption to more flexible systems of production (often referred to as economies of scope or batch production) and organisation (such as flexible work patterns). Post-Fordism also makes tentative links to changes in the way that goods and services are consumed, with rapidly changing consumer tastes and the emergence of niche and segmented markets.

The applicability of these ideas to the changes in tourism have now been acknow- ledged. It would appear, that just as Butlins holiday camps or packaged holidays are indicative of services mass-produced and consumed under a regime of Fordism, the emergence of small group tours to Bolivia or truck journeys across sub-Saharan Africa is indicative of Post-Fordism. Further examples of tourism types associated with post-Fordist consumption are given in Table 2.4. Lash and Urry (1994) in particular point to the demand for ‘independent holidays’ and the increasing environmental planning and control of tourism in places such as Belize or Bermuda as examples of new alternatives to mass tourism. They also recognise the importance of Third World countries in these changes, arguing that ‘the development of “alternative tourism” in some developing countries’ (1994: 274) is a clear example of post-Fordist tourism. We will return to this argument in Chapter 4 in discussing the shape of new tourisms

11111 that have emerged.

22 • Globalisation, sustainability, development Table 2.4 Post-Fordism and tourism

Post-Fordist consumption

Tourist examples

Consumers increasingly dominant and Rejection of certain forms of mass tourism producers have to be much more

(holiday camp and cheaper packaged holidays) consumer-oriented

and increased diversity of preferences Greater volatility of consumer

Fewer repeat visits and the proliferation of preference

alternative sites and attractions Increased market segmentation

Multiplication of types of holiday and visitor attractions based on lifestyle research

Growth of a consumers movement Much more information provided about alternative holidays and attractions through the media

Development of many new products, Rapid turnover of tourist sites and experiences each of which has a shorter life

because of fashion changes Increased preferences expressed for

Growth of ‘green tourism’ and of forms of non-mass forms of

refreshment and accommodation which are production/consumption

individually tailored to the consumer (such as country house hotels)

Consumption is less and less ‘De-differentiation’ of tourism from leisure, ‘functional’ and increasingly

culture, retailing, education, sport, hobbies aestheticised

Source: Lash and Urry (1994: 274)

So far some of the most salient features in contemporary global change have been described. But what forces drive these global economic processes? The most penetrating analysis has been offered by the Marxist geographer David Harvey who presents the concept of time–space compression, which is of considerable interest in unravelling the growth and development of Third World tourism. It is worth spending a little time considering his ideas, for they move an understanding of global change beyond the descriptive analysis and prescription of how global capitalism works and seek instead to demonstrate why capitalism changes in the way it manifestly does. Further- more, time–space compression provides an opportunity to overcome the problems of the geographical literature on tourism, criticised by Britton as offering ‘little more than

a cursory and superficial analysis of how the tourism industry is structured and

regulated by the classic imperatives and laws governing capitalist accumulation’ (1991: 456).

Harvey presents the time–space compression thesis in his now widely cited The Condition of Postmodernity (1989b). The present phase of globalisation, Harvey argues, involves a marked increase in the pace of economic (and everyday) life and a phenom- enal acceleration in the movement of capital and information. Time–space compression seeks to encapsulate this intensification as capitalists aim to overcome the barriers of distance and stretch their economic relationships to all parts of the globe. It is, in other words, part of an ongoing expansion of capitalist relations of production where the primary objective is to reduce the turnover time of capital and to quicken the circula- tion time of capital, and to sustain profits. Both new markets and new products are sought in order to achieve this and the process is clearly reflected in the way in which an increasing number of holiday destinations are drawn into the global tourism industry.

Box 2.2 demonstrates the way in which information is moved more rapidly within global networks and the way that travel experiences are advanced to such a degree that it is no longer necessary to leave your home or office. Box 2.2 may appear an

Globalisation, sustainability, development • 23