5 British Airways’s environmental strategy Since 1989, British Airways has:

Box 7.5 British Airways’s environmental strategy Since 1989, British Airways has:

• appointed a Director of Safety, Security and Environment and a Head of Environment;

• undertaken a series of reviews and audits of its main airport locations and their impacts on the local environment in terms of noise, gaseous emissions, conges- tion, waste and tourism;

• sponsored annual Tourism for Tomorrow Awards; •

sponsored the WTTERC; •

conducted an environmental audit of its related tour operator company, British Airways Holidays;

• initiated a Light Green programme which allows employees to suggest ways of reducing the environmental impacts of the company;

• introduced a Company Travel Plan which, among other things, subsidises free public transport use by its employees; and

• produced an annual Environment Report which makes public a considerable amount of data about its operations.

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what it doesn’t do, and what it does do is viewed critically as PR’ (personal communi- cation, 1995).

Despite sympathy with this problem of interpretation, it is still important to ask whether the creation of BA’s environment branch has had or is likely to have a signifi- cant effect on the company’s operations. Is it possible that changes that have been attrib- uted to the influence of its environment branch would have occurred in any case as a result of changing regulations and changing public awareness? And has the growing importance of the public image of airlines had a significant role in the company’s percep- tion of the need to create such a branch? Beyond these questions, the real test is whether the creation of such a department really affects the ethos and operations of the company. In the case of BA, the answer to this will depend heavily upon one’s viewpoint and employment, especially if the latter is with BA or a BA subsidiary such as BAH. A

13111 definitive answer is not offered here; but it is stressed that it is important to ask the questions in any analysis of the tourism industry. It is also important to recognise that such management restructuring exercises offer the potential for deception as well as genuine change.

There is no clearer illustration of this type of use of internal management restruc- turing as an attempt to claim false environmental credentials than the World Bank’s actions through 1987 and 1988. The World Bank in itself is not a private enterprise or

a transnational corporation of course, but in essence it operates on behalf of such compa- nies and actually leads rather than follows the objectives which guide them. It is there- fore used here, briefly, to illustrate a point that is relevant to the rest of the industry.

At the start of 1987 the Bank employed 2,700 staff above secretarial level, of whom only three were trained ecologists. Their task was to monitor the environmental and social implications and impacts of over 250 new projects each year. In response to mounting awareness and criticism from many quarters throughout the 1980s, the Bank created a new environment department which employed some forty people. By the end of 1987 it began to assess environmental threats in the thirty most vulnerable devel- oping nations, and to design initiatives against desertification and deforestation. Particularly through its then-President, Barber Conable, it also began to express a commitment to environmental and social criteria. At the time, the Bank’s Acting Director of its Environment Department, J. Warford, spelled out this new commitment:

consequences of projects, and, if necessary, amend or reject them on environ-

World Bank staff have clear instructions to carefully consider the environmental

mental grounds. The Bank has recently announced plans to substantially increase its staff devoted to this work, and will recruit additional ecologists, biologists, anthropologists and other expertise as necessary to ensure that our projects and policies are consistent with environmental objectives.

(Personal communication, 1987) Despite its admission of past mistakes and failure and despite its newly stated commit-

ment to reform, the Bank remained wedded to the kind of large-scale projects and major investments in energy, infrastructure and industrialisation which had previously caused so much environmental damage. Its commitment to local residents and indigenous people has taken the form largely of resettlement programmes and cash compensation. Its commitment to more conspicuous environmental issues is also highly dubious – in 1995 a billion dollar World Bank package to help prop up private Mexican banks was partly funded by cutting previously approved Bank loans for the environment and other ‘not such high’ priority projects (Chatterjee, 1995). As Ian Linden, then General

11111 Secretary of the Catholic Institute for International Relations, made clear:

198 • The industry

Unfortunately this intention of amendment did not extend . . . from the diakonic to the evangelistic. Poverty programmes were merely clamped on to the main body of doctrine. The World Bank would try to help the strangers, widows and orphans, but the content of their crusade, the Great Doctrine of structural adjust- ment, remained the same.

(1993: 3) It is often pointed out that awareness of an issue is the necessary stage before action.

In this context this means that company directors and presidents will talk about the environment before changing their practices. It may take longer than the save-the-world groups would like, but the change will occur if given time. This argument might be based more on wishful thinking than on evidence, for the industry, more than any other branch of tourism, will change rapidly once it perceives some factor or phenomenon that will bring advantage to it.

A reorientation of the aims, ethos and operations of the tour industry implies the need for structural rather than cosmetic change in its management operations. Unless such structural change is evident, then there must be serious doubt about the intentions behind the creation of new management divisions or departments, especially where they are given severely limited budgets and are marginalised within organisational structures. Such moves as the creation of a new department and the design of a new mission state- ment may be necessary steps in the process of change but are not in themselves indica- tive of a significant shift in approach. Indeed, they may simply reflect the industry’s wish to redefine sustainability in order to allow its operations to continue as usual.

With this in mind, the obvious suggestion is the centralisation of some form of rating or ecolabelling system, independently designed and applied, to which tourists and other users of the industry (such as suppliers) could refer. The problem with such a system is that it suggests some form of regulation, and, as already noted earlier in this section, most of the industry is fixed determinedly against regulation imposed by others. As Jonathan Croall says, ‘Sadly, such a scheme is likely to be firmly resisted by the industry’ (1996: 5). This only serves to further throw into question the motives of industry-based moves to alter its management structures. The industry will gain credibility for its internal changes only if it subjects them to external criteria and assessment. And even then, if it is done under the guise of a consultancy, as seen earlier, there is a chance that the consultancy will act as an integral part of the industry with its currently prevailing

ethos of profit maximisation.

‘Reality’ and ‘practicality’ in achieving sustainability

The tourism business community is much the same as other sectors of business in its invocation of ‘business realities’ in order to justify or excuse its resistance to change and to external influences. ‘Commercial practicalities’, ‘the real world’, ‘the need to keep the competitive edge’ and similar phrases are used to argue against regulation from government and interference from environmentalists and conservation, labour and human rights organisations.

Recently, the arrival on the scene of many companies which claim to operate a form of sustainable, environmentally friendly and ethical tourism has begun to challenge this resistance. The alliances made by these companies with environmental and conserva- tion organisations, the stipulation of maximum group size for tours, the promotion of codes of conduct, attempts at consultation, and other activities designed to display environmental and ethical credentials have shown to companies which typified the no- change attitude that a degree of change is possible. But what needs to be asked is how

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far profit maximisation has compromised the changes? Or has it simply served to preserve the existing social, economic and political structures in which the problems of tourism identified by many authors since the 1980s are inherent?

We have tried here to question whether the techniques used by the industry to convey an atmosphere of change and to claim sustainability are cosmetic and superficial regard- less of whether they originate from the conventional mass tour companies or the new and specialist tour companies. Are these techniques used effectively to bolster respect for the prevailing mode of production and service and all the problems that this creates? Or do they genuinely address the problems in such a way that the system no longer creates them? Have consultancies such as Forum for the Future, formed by environ- mentalists who are often considered to be, or at least portrayed as, radical, simply lent their good name to a variety of companies in return for minor, marginal changes in

13111 practice and a healthy consultancy fee? How valid is their justification that the real world is run by businesses whose mode of operation dominates, and that therefore we must work with and inside them in order to bring about change? Is this the only practical strategy of action to pursue? And if so, how effective is it likely to be in altering the basis of the system of capital accumulation, which we have suggested throughout is the origin of the problems caused by both mass and new forms of tourism development?

The excuse of ‘the real world’ or ‘business practicalities’ can be used as a justifica- tion for doing nothing or making the least change possible. These ‘realities’, however they are defined, can be used to persuade those in search of change to work with the industry in order, jointly, to examine and implement the ways in which change can be made, sustainability sought, and impacts reduced. It is precisely this ‘request that environmental groups change campaigning “from exhortation to a discussion of practi- calities and tools”’ (Forsyth, 1996: 22) which is used in an attempt to rein in the demands of the environmental lobby, to persuade it that cosmetic change is adequate, and then to subvert it by using it (the environmental lobby) as a public relations ploy.

It can be contended that both new tour operators, in their attempt to present a distinct environmental image, and conventional tour operators, in their attempt to take on environmental credentials, are in fact simply carrying on business as usual but with selected ‘add-on’ features and marginal changes to established practices. As one of BAH’s area managers described his company’s policy on social and environmental issues, ‘It is basically a PR exercise in many respects because obviously there is a growing awareness of green issues’ (personal communication, 19 September 1996). In an examination of environmental valuation, Colin Price summarises both the way in which the industry usurps the notion of sustainability and the logic it uses to justify this:

The mood of the 1990s has made it mandatory for public, corporate and private bodies to embrace the sustainable development idea. The let-out clauses of weak and metaphorical sustainability ensure that this need not be financially burdensome. Sustainability objectives will be adopted by the politically astute, while continued application of discounting underwrites a ‘business as usual’ practice.

(1993: 142) What Price calls discounting refers to the ignoring of externalities such as environmental

and social costs. This captures our own analysis of what is happening in the industry. But regardless of the contentious nature of this view, it is crucial that the questions above are asked in order to test the veracity and sincerity of the industry’s stated

11111 policies.

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New personnel and new features of the new tourism industry

The following pages give thumbnail sketches of a variety of personnel and features involved in the provision of new forms of tourism. Although they are based on real characters, they are sketchy and stereotypical, despite which they are illustrative of many of the features and phenomena of new tourists, new tour companies and new tourism that have been discussed.

The new tour operators and their teams

Because the scale of operation and the size of company of new tour operators is gener- ally smaller than those of conventional mass tourism (there are exceptions) it is possible to identify individual exponents and employees of the new tourism business, whereas the latter are characterised by large departments. Indeed, many of the new operators which offer independent or small group travelling, trucking and trekking tours are closely associated with one or two individual characters or with a family. High Places, for instance, is directed by Mary and Bob Lancaster who head a team of about twelve tour leaders, all of whom are identified with a photograph and potted biography in their brochures. Similar potted biographies are given by many of the trekking and trucking companies such as Explore, Truck Africa, Naturetrek and Guerba Expeditions. A number of these biographies for the Explore Team were given in Box 5.2.

David Sayers Travel, specialists in botanical and garden travel with several Third World destinations on their books, is a small company which plays strongly on its personal approach, inviting potential clients to visit its director, David Sayers, and his partner at their Lincolnshire home. Bales, an older and well established tour company catering for the less adventurous, older and more wealthy clients, also exploits the family basis of the company to convey its personable and approachable style.

Leadership characteristics played upon by some companies which offer expedition adventures, including overland trucking, mountain climbing, biking and rafting tours, are the youthfulness, vigour, success and machismo of their guides or leaders. ‘Dave has a Guiness World Record for his 10,000 km trans-Africa ride’ (Exodus Biking Adventures). ‘[H]e also descended the infamous Rhondu gorges on the Indus River in northern Pakistan, featured in the television documentary “The Taming of the Lion”’ (Ultimate Descents). ‘He has made a number of films of Chris Bonington’s expeditions and has been on eleven trips to the Himalayas’ (Himalayan Kingdoms). One ‘lives close to the Cairngorms in Scotland where he and his team run the Avalanche Patrols each winter’ (High Places). ‘Chris has worked as a mechanic in many areas of the world, including a stint in the Yukon as a gold mine engineer!’ (Truck Africa). ‘A veteran of two Everest expeditions and many other Himalayan climbs’ (Guerba Himalaya). ‘A skilled photogra- pher, Chris has captured an enormous variety of African wildlife on film’ (Naturetrek).

Clearly, lifestyle is an important feature of the directors, leaders and partners of the new tour operators, and this is as much so in the USA as in the UK. One company which uses the term ‘lifestyle’ in its name, Lifestyle Explorations, is featured in Box

7.6. A few insights into the thoughts of its director, Sara Laing, complement the infor- mation taken from its brochure and appear in part to reflect the characteristics of neo- colonialism discussed in Chapter 3. It is interesting to contrast the notion of arranging tours which have the purpose of selling land and property in Honduras and emphasising its cheapness to potential US purchasers and investors with the fact that this country is

characterised by chronic poverty, malnutrition and landlessness. 4 Such juxtapositions are symptomatic of the paradox that underlines so much tourism and further emphasise the relative power and powerlessness that are involved.

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