Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world and plays an important role in the global economy by generating billions of dollars in revenue and providing millions of jobs that relate directly and indirectly to tourism.¹ Although tourism can be used as a tool for development and improved quality of life in both developed and developing nations, tourism has been shown to have negative impacts on the environment, wildlife, and the socio-cultural values of host communities around the world.¹ Due to the intersectional impacts of the tourism industry, it is necessary to approach this issue using a systems thinking approach, rather than a linear, cause-effect approach, to explore sustainable solutions. 

Systems thinking is defined by Niesenbaum as “a holistic approach that focuses on the linkages and interactions between elements that compose an entire system, including social and environmental conditions,” and it “allows us to consider human impact and sustainability from a broad perspective that includes seeing overall structures, patterns, and cycles as opposed to just specific events.”² Systems thinking helps us to visualize how individual parts of a system can influence each other directly or indirectly to create positive/negative feedback loops, allowing us to better understand the complicated relationship between problems and their solutions.² Using systems thinking, I will explore the causes, consequences, solutions, and barriers of tourism in order to further understand how these elements interact and influence one another.

Figure 1. Systems thinking model for tourism, including causes (purple), consequences (green), solutions (blue), and barriers (orange). The signs next to the arrows indicate whether the individual elements have a positive (+) or negative (-) influence on another.

Although this diagram does not encompass every cause, consequence, solution, or barrier there is in the tourism industry, it does allow us to get a sense of how these elements interact with one another, and visualize how complicated these connections actually are (Figure 1). One of the things I learned from completing this exercise is that some of the barriers to sustainable tourism development are simply the opposite of the solutions. Transparent and open communication between stakeholders is an integral part of achieving sustainable development, especially in the tourism sector, and so a lack of communication between stakeholders is a large barrier that prevents sustainable changes from being made. Similarly, lack of access to education is a barrier to achieving sustainability because if local residents and tour operators are not taught how to be environmentally conscious they cannot educate tourists on how to be environmentally conscious either, which inevitably leads to more environmental harm. Therefore the solution to this barrier is to improve education and access to education, but the barrier, conversely, is not having that kind of access.

This exercise also revealed how difficult it is to find a solution that does not have any consequences associated with it. Every solution has a cost, but that cost is generally less expensive than leaving the issue unresolved. For example, ecotourism is, by definition, a sustainable form of tourism that is meant to decrease the impact of tourism on wildlife, the environment, and the socio-cultural values of host communities.³ Ecotourism, however, still requires people to travel, often to remote locations that require extensive transportation to reach (which means the release of carbon emissions). However, as a solution, ecotourism is much more sustainable, and less costly (impact wise), than mass tourism which has a high environmental and socio-cultural footprint.

Another solution I mentioned in the figure is climate action, which involves the potential transition to green, renewable energy, a decrease in carbon emissions, and the use of sustainable products. Though this solution decreases the carbon footprint and environmental impact of the tourism industry, it also has some unintended barriers and consequences, most of which are associated with the cost of sustainability. High start-up costs are a considerable barrier for the transition to green, renewable energy as the low price of fossil fuels makes it difficult for renewables to compete in the marketplace.² A transition to renewable energy would also require the development of new, multi-dimensional infrastructure to support renewable energy systems, as most current infrastructure is centered around the consumption of fossil fuels.² Though the development of this type of infrastructure would help to decrease carbon emissions in the tourism sector in the long run, the immediate consequences of reconstructing local infrastructure would involve some degree of environmental harm, pollution, and carbon emissions. Once again it becomes necessary to weigh the costs and benefits of the solution in order to consider what will be more sustainable in the long run. 

By using systems thinking, it is clear to see that there is no single solution to the issue of tourism, just as there is no single cause, consequence, or barrier. Each of these elements interact and influence one another in a complicated relationship, and it is necessary to understand each element in this relationship in order to assess the sustainability of a particular solution. As I move forward with my research on the impacts of tourism, I will continue to use systems thinking in my approach to determine what solutions are suitable to achieve sustainable tourism development. 

References

1. Impact of Tourism: Tourism: Economy; Environment; Society. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.drbrambedkarcollege.ac.in/sites/default/files/Impact%20of%20Tourism_pdf.pdf
2. Niesenbaum, R. (2020). In Sustainable Solutions: Problem Solving for Current and Future Generations. New York: Oxford University Press.
3. The International Ecotourism Society. (2019). What is Ecotourism? https://ecotourism.org/what-is-ecotourism/