Journal of Sustainable Tourism

ISSN: 0966-9582 (Print) 1747-7646 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsus20

Constructing sustainable tourism development:

The 2030 agenda and the managerial ecology of
sustainable tourism

C. Michael Hall

To cite this article: C. Michael Hall (2019): Constructing sustainable tourism development: The
2030 agenda and the managerial ecology of sustainable tourism, Journal of Sustainable Tourism,
DOI: 10.1080/09669582.2018.1560456

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2018.1560456

Published online: 19 Jan 2019.

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JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2018.1560456

Constructing sustainable tourism development: The 2030

agenda and the managerial ecology of sustainable tourism
C. Michael Halla,b,c
a
Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, University of Canterbury, Christchurch,
New Zealand; bSchool of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden; cDepartment of
Geography, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets a series of sus- Received 10 April 2018
tainable development goals (SDGs) “to end poverty, protect the planet Accepted 21 November 2018
and ensure prosperity for all” by 2030. The Agenda influences tourism
KEYWORDS
policy even though the Agenda resolution only mentions tourism three
Complexity; heterogeneous
times. A “heterogeneous constructionism” approach is adopted to exam- constructionism; knowledge;
ine the managerial ecology of tourism and the SDGs. Managerial ecol- managerial ecology;
ogy involves the instrumental application of science and economic neoliberalism; sustainable
utilitarian approaches and in the service of resource utilisation and eco- development goals
nomic development. A managerial ecological approach is integral to
UNWTO work on the SDGs, as well as other actors, and is reflected in
policy recommendations for achievement of the SDGs even though
tourism is less sustainable than ever with respect to resource use. This
situation substantially affects capacities to do “other,” and create alter-
native development and policy trajectories. It is concluded that a more
reflexive understanding of knowledge and management is required to
better understand the implications of knowledge circulation and legit-
imisation and action for sustainable tourism. More fundamentally, there
is a need to rethink human–environment relations given the mistaken
belief that the exertion of more effort and greater efficiency will alone
solve problems of sustainable tourism.

Introduction
It has become something of a truism that sustainable development is a major focus of tourism
policy makers, including industry and destination marketing organisations, and of tourism
researchers. In the case of the former, for example, the lead UN agency the World Tourism
Organisation (UNWTO) has sustainable development as one of the key headings on its website
for what it does (together with mainstreaming tourism, ethics and social responsibility, tourism
and development, competitiveness and fostering knowledge). With respect to the latter, there is
a designated journal focussing on sustainable tourism, and numerous texts and journal articles,
accounting for possibly as much as around five percent of journal output (Hall, Lew, & Williams,
2014). The policy significance of sustainable tourism is such that 2017 was the official UN
International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. Yet despite such interest and overt
attention, empirical measures suggest the tourism is actually less sustainable than ever at the
€ssling, Scott, & Hall, 2015; Scott, Hall, & Go
global scale (Hall, 2011; Rutty, Go €ssling, 2016a, Scott,

CONTACT C. Michael Hall michael.hall@canterbury.ac.nz

ß 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 C. M. HALL

Go€ssling, Hall, & Peeters, 2016b). Concerns as to tourism’s contribution to sustainable develop-
ment have also become an issue at the local scale following a series of high profile negative
reactions to tourism growth in destinations such as Barcelona, Iceland and Venice, which have
become part of a wider industry and policy maker response to the supposed “success” of tour-
ism, perhaps best illustrated by the high profile World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) and
McKinsey & Company (2017) report on Coping with Success: Managing Overcrowding in Tourism
Destinations.
The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets a series of sustainable development
goals (SDGs) “to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all” by 2030 “as part
of a new sustainable development agenda.” Given the emphasis of the UNWTO on sustainable
tourism and the economic significance of the sector the SDGs and the associated millennium
development goals (MDGs) have become focal points for the study of tourism’s contribution to
sustainable development and the sustainability of tourism overall (Christie & Sharma, 2008;
Saarinen, Rogerson, & Manwa, 2011; Saarinen & Rogerson, 2014). This is despite the United
Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development resolution only mentioning tourism three
times – in the context of natural resource use and conservation, employment generation and the
promotion of local culture and products, and the sustainable use of marine resources so as to
increase the economic benefits to small island developing states and least developed countries.
Nevertheless, despite some critiques of the means to achieving the goals (Ferguson, 2011;
Scheyvens, Banks, & Hughes, 2016), the dominant discourse tends to reflect the approaches and
themes of the UNWTO and UNDP’s (2017) account of tourism’s “journey” to achieving the SDGs.
As the UNDP and UNDP (2017) suggest, without any irony following their review of national
reporting on tourism and the SDGs, “Evidently, if tourism is not well managed, it can have a
negative impact on people, the planet, prosperity and peace” (p. 31). Key factors regarded as
crucial to the success of the SDG journey to 2030 include enhanced competitiveness (Ruhanen,
2007), the significance of the private/corporate sector, and improved management and use of
technology in becoming more efficient in responding to environmental/economic/social prob-
lems (Herrera-Cano & Herrera-Cano, 2016; Henriques & Brilha, 2017; Imon, 2017; Koide & Akenji,
2017; Lima, Eusebio, Partidario, & Garcıa Go
mez, 2012; Novelli & Hellwig, 2011), often in relation
to specific local case studies (Lapeyre, 2011; Matarrita-Cascante, Brennan, & Luloff, 2010;
Mbaiwa, 2011).
The nature and achievement of sustainable development can be considered in a variety of
ways (Hopwood, Mellor, & O’Brien, 2005), including with respect to tourism (Hall, Go €ssling, &
Scott, 2015). This therefore raises a critical question: Why then are the SDGs predominantly
framed in a particular growth and business way in a tourism context that emphasise the import-
ance of market oriented approaches and managerialism, when the SDGs are also concerned with
broader social and environmental concerns as well as economic change? And, therefore, poten-
tially other ways of framing, seeing and doing. For example, Taleb Rifai, Secretary-General of the
UNWTO suggests, “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 [SDGs] sets the
path that we all must embrace. … the private sector, which is the key player in tourism, … is
beginning to recognise that the SDGs offer true business opportunities as sustainable business
operations can spur competitiveness and increase profit” (UNWTO-UNDP, 2017, pp. 6–7). Achim
Steiner, UNDP Administrator, states, “The role of the private sector and access to financing are
paramount to building a more sustainable tourism sector. Long-term competitiveness depends
on the willingness to manage industry vulnerabilities and invest in new markets and services … ”
(UNWTO-UNDP, 2017, p. 9). At the Official Closing ceremony of the International Year of
Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017 which discussed the “roadmap” for advancing the
contribution of tourism towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Gloria Guevara,
President and CEO, WTTC, similarly commented, “Sustainability remains the bedrock of our activ-
ity. We will continue to drive the conversation on planning for and managing tourism growth,
define a sector-wide response to climate change, work on how the sector can reduce illegal
 JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 3

trade in wildlife and contribute to inclusive job creation” (UNWTO, 2017a). In the same official
UNWTO press release for the event, Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman, Talal Abu-Ghazaleh
Organisation in Jordan was quoted as saying, “I personally believe that the future of tourism lies
in enabling ICT capacities. Accordingly, we should harness those powers for smart tourism … I
believe that the way forward in our journey to 2030, is smart tourism. I call on all of you to
guide me and support me in this endeavor”; while Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch, State
Secretary Economic Affairs (SECO) of Switzerland states, “In the future, a strong international
cooperation of all relevant actors involved in the tourism sector should become the driving force
to promote sustainable tourism and to implement tourism policies efficiently” (UNWTO, 2017a).
So, are we all meant to follow, cooperate and work with the UNWTO and UNDO focus on SDGs
in order to be relevant or does relevance lie beyond official agendas and the seeming synchron-
icity of approaches that appear to dominate sustainable tourism discourse?
Grounded in research on natural resource management practices (Bavington, 2001, 2011;
Bavington & Banoub, 2016; Jenkins, 2015; Oelschlaeger, 2014; Thornton & Hebert, 2015), this
paper draws upon critiques of managerial ecology to highlight the way in which the develop-
ment and implementation of the SDGs in the context of tourism, reflects the main actors
“mutual coercion mutually agreed upon through the self-organising disciplinary power of the
market’s invisible hand” (Bavington, 2011, p. 9). Importantly, researchers themselves are often
part of the system of natural resource management by which nature, as well as human activity,
is valorised in terms of property, services, and private rights (Bavington, 2011). As Wynn (2011, p.
xvii) suggests, “conveniently, these strategies proved entirely congruent with prevailing neo-
liberal economic doctrines emphasising the challenges of complexity, conflict and uncertainty in
economic systems.” Just as significantly, the critique of managerial ecology claims that much nat-
ural resource management could best be described as a form of “managed annihilation”
(Bavington, 2001, 2011) by which natural resources decline as a result of “people too much given
to framing the world as a set of problems they have the capacity to fix” (Wynn, 2011, p. xvii).
This paper provides a counter-institutional perspective on the tourism sector’s approach to
the SDGs and the framing of sustainable tourism. This is primarily undertaken in relation to the
received view of the dominant social paradigm within tourism that defines the basic belief struc-
tures and practices of tourism marketplace actors as manifested in existing exchange structures
as well as the actions of actors that serve to reinforce the paradigm within associated institu-
tional structures. Lead international agencies, such as the UNWTO and the World Travel and
Tourism Council (WTTC), together with larger corporate actors and national industry associations
and destination marketing organisations are key actors in the promotion of the value of the mar-
ket, growth, competition and the “management” of problems. Such a paradigm is also strongly
reinforced by many universities and the academics within them. This is despite the growing con-
tradictions between such positions and sustainability, as evidenced by increased biodiversity loss,
growing concentration of economic wealth in the hands of a few, and the increasing realities of
a changing climate (Rutty et al., 2015). Instead, knowledge is inherently multiple, with multiple
claims to representing reality and multiple ways of knowing (Sandercock, 1998). This construc-
tionist position is in contrast to positivist claims that examination of the facts will reveal the
truth that can be rationally responded to by management practices. Accordingly, a
“heterogeneous constructionism” approach is taken to the construction of the SDGs and tourism
in terms of existing exchange structures. The nature of this approach is discussed first, before
examining tourism and the SDGs, particularly as constructed by the UNWTO.

Heterogeneous constructionism
Sustainability is an environmental problem. But how is our notion of the environment that we
respond to in personal, economic, management and policy terms constructed?
4 C. M. HALL

The problem of tourism and the SDGs, and sustainable tourism overall, raises questions about
the significance of biophysical processes for tourism production systems, and therefore requires
addressing dualistic notions about the natural world and its relationship to socio-economic proc-
esses. As Mansfield (2003) questioned, “How can we treat nature, biophysical processes, and the
‘organic’ as analytically significant without treating them as a mechanistic function or a material-
ity that is outside of social existence?” (p. 10). Taylor (1995a, 1995b, 1999) used the term
“heterogeneous constructionism,” to capture an emphasis on the heterogeneity of components,
elements or resources drawn into the practice of knowledge making. Taylor (1995a) used the
qualifier “heterogeneous” to establish some distance from standard views about social construc-
tion, which imply that scientists’ accounts reflect or are determined by their social views.
Demeritt’s (2001) examination of the construction of global warming and the politics of sci-
ence used a heterogeneous constructionism approach to refers to the “mutual construction of
nature, science, and society. Rather than taking these phenomena as given, this approach is con-
cerned with how they are constructed through the specific and negotiated articulation of hetero-
geneous social actors” (Demeritt, 2001, p. 311). From this approach, the facts of nature are not
given as such but emerge artefactually as the heterogeneously constructed result of contingent
social practices (Demeritt, 1998, 2001). Heterogeneous constructionism is ontologically realist
about entities, but epistemologically antirealist with respect to theories and how they are framed
with respect to relations (Demeritt, 1998), i.e. what we designate as “carbon dioxide” has an
ontologically objective existence, but our conception and classification of it are socially contin-
gent. Heterogeneous constructionism therefore provides a way of acknowledging “that the world
‘matters’ without taking for granted either the particular configuration of its matter or the proc-
esses by which it may be realised for us” (2001, p. 311). As Rouse (1987) stated with respect to
the physical sciences
Practices are not representations that can be understood abstractly. They are always ways of dealing with
the world. The ontological kinds they make manifest are determinable only through our purposive
interactions with things of those kinds, and thereby with the other things that surround us. And those other
things are as essential to the existence of meaningful ontological possibilities as our practices are …
Another way to put this is that for there to be things of any particular kinds, there must be a world to
which they belong. But the reality of that world is not a hypothesis to be demonstrated; it is the already
given condition that makes possible any meaningful action at all, including posing and demonstrating
hypotheses. (Rouse, 1987, pp. 159–60)

A heterogeneous construction approach seeks to avoid dualistic categories that treat nature
either as an external realm that acts as resource for, limit to, determinant of, or backdrop to
human society, or as a pure social construction with no independent reality. Instead, for the het-
erogeneous constructionist, nature and the environment are artifactual and their understanding
an active and ontologically transformative practice. For example, the development of nature-
based industries, such as the ecotourism sector, highlights that biophysical processes provide
both barriers and opportunities for production systems, and as such, they play a key role in
structuring some industries, especially those that are biologically based (Boyd, Prudham, &
Schurman, 2001). As Castree (2005, p. 16) comments, “without knowledges of nature we can
never really come to know the nature to which these knowledges refer … we use tacit and
explicit knowledges to organise our engagements with those phenomenon we classify as
‘natural’. There is, in short, no unmediated access to the natural world free from frameworks of
understanding.”
The classical empiricist approach has been extremely significant in research on tourism and
the environment, and is integral to the SDGs as they seek to enable growth while simultaneously
conserving nature and natural resources, but the framework it provides is often taken for
granted without consideration of the “assumptions that organise and, importantly, circumscribe
the field of analysis” (Castree, 2002, pp. 116–117). The clearest example of this comes with the
notion of impact, a metaphor derived from the material realist ontology of classical empiricism
 JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 5

that is widely used with respect to tourism and sustainability, including with respect to the SDGs
and concepts of “overtourism.” For example, the UNWTO-UNDP (2017) report notes, “Both coun-
tries and companies lack frameworks to capture, aggregate and report on the full economic,
social and environmental impacts of tourism” with respect to “Improving performance by meas-
uring impact and sharing knowledge” (p. 14). While the report defines sustainable tourism itself
in relation to impacts as “tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic,
social and environmental impacts” (UNWTO-UNDP, 2017, p. 17).
The metaphor of human impacts is a major focus of sustainable tourism and “has come to
frame our thinking and circumscribe debate about what constitutes explanation” (Head, 2008, p.
374). The metaphor has certain features:

1. The emphasis on the moment(s) of collision between two separate entities (e.g. the “impact”
between tourism and the economic/social/physical environment as part of the “three pillars”
of sustainability) has favoured explanations that depend on correlation in time and space
(Weyl, 2009), and methodologies that are fully focussed on dating and/or particular
moments in time, to the detriment of the search for mechanisms of connection and caus-
ation rather than simple correlation (Head, 2008).
2. The emphasis on the moment(s) of impact assumes a stable natural, social or economic base-
line, and an experimental method in which only one variable is changed (Head, 2008). Such an
approach is also inappropriate for understanding complex and dynamic socio-environmental
systems (Hall, 2013a).
3. Third, and perhaps most profoundly influential, is the way the terms “tourism impacts” or
“tourist impacts” ontologically positions tourism and tourists as “outside” the system under
analysis, as outside of nature (or whatever it is that is being impacted) (Hall, 2013a). This is
ironic given that research on global environmental change demonstrates just how deeply
entangled tourism is in environmental systems (Rutty et al., 2015), yet the metaphor remains
in widespread use in official documents and in tourism research.
4. Putting a significant explanatory divide between humans and nature requires the conflation
of bundles of variable processes under such headings as “human,” “climate,” and
“environment” (Demeritt, 2001; Head, 2007, 2008). To which we could add “tourism.”
5. A further characteristic of dichotomous explanations is their veneer of simplicity and elegance.
Yet, “the principle that preference should be given to explanations that require the fewest
number of assumptions has been incorrectly conflated with the idea that simpler explana-
tions are more likely to be true than complex ones … In fact, the view that causality is sim-
ple takes many more assumptions than the view that it is complex” (Head, 2008, p. 374).

As Demeritt (2001) was at pains to point out, his approach was not a claim that anthropo-
genic climate change was not real, rather that very little attention has been paid to the cultural
politics of scientific practice and its consequential role in framing and, in that sense, constructing
knowledge. Instead, he contended that the demand for and expectation of policy relevance on
scientific research has subtly shaped the formulation of research questions, choice of methods,
standards of proof, and the definition of other aspects of what constitutes “good” scientific prac-
tice. This pattern of reciprocal influence between the science and politics of climate change,
Demeritt (2001, pp. 308–309) argues, “belies the categorical distinction so often made between
science, based purely on objective fact, and politics, which involves value-laden decision making
that is separable from and downstream of science.” In a similar fashion, the argument developed
here asserts that a heterogeneous constructionist interpretation, in revealing “complexity” and
the entangled interaction of society-environment-technology, raises serious questions about the
implications of the relationship between tourism and the SDGs being dominated by a particular
economic-political discourse and the policy responses which it legitimates (Bickerstaff &
Walker, 2003).
6 C. M. HALL

Tourism and the SDGs as managerial ecology

Managerial ecology, as expressed in environmental and resource management, involves the
instrumental application of science and utilitarian economic approaches in the service of
resource utilisation and economic development (Bavington & Slocombe, 2002). According to
Merchant (1980, p. 238): “Managerial ecology seeks to maximise energy production, economic
yields and environmental quality through ecosystem modelling, manipulation, and prediction of
outcomes,” and is characterised by an “unquestioned faith in management as the solution to
deep seated ecological and social problems” (Bavington, 2002, p. 5). Merchant (1980) argued
that the historical roots of managerial ecology lay in reductionist utilitarian approaches to the
human–nature relationship, while Zwier and Blok (2017) see the Anthropocene concept as an
outcome of managerial ecology thinking. Nevertheless, while complexity science focuses on
uncertainty and there being limits on predictability and control, what Sardar and Ravetz (1994)
described as resulting in the demolition of “the notion of control and certainty in science,” there
has not been “a wholesale rejection of the idea of management, rather it has resulted in redefin-
ition, redeployment and relocation of management, managers and the managed” (Bavington,
2002, p. 7).
Management is significant in its perceived capacity to solve complex problems, such as those
tackled by the SDGs, because it seeks to eliminate indeterminism and emphasises the role of sci-
ence and technology in addressing crises (Alvesson & Willmott, 2012). In contrast, more recent
developments in socio-ecological thinking have highlighted not only the multi-scale dynamic
complexity of sustainability issues but also the way in which policy-making is influenced by val-
ues and the political ecology of decisions. However, the consequences of complexity from a
managerial ecology framework depend on perspective. If complexity is seen from an ontological
perspective as an inherent characteristic of nature then this clearly suggests that there must be
limits to control and, instead, adaptive and coping strategies are required. In contrast, if com-
plexity is regarded as an epistemological problem, then complexity is not an inherent “fact,” but
instead an outcome of perspective, level of knowledge and the tools that are used for analysis
(Bavington, 2010). For example, even though the UNWTO and UNDP (2017) acknowledge that
tourism value chains are characterised by their “immense size and complexity” (p. 44), they go
on to argue, “Effective management requires consistent measurement of impact: While the tourism
private sector can contribute to all 17 SDGs – in particular to SDGs 12, 13, 1, 4 and 8 on
‘Responsible Consumption and Production’, ‘Climate Action’, ‘No Poverty’, ‘Quality Education’,
and ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’, respectively – its impact is still difficult to measure
given that there is no universal means by which travel and tourism businesses and destinations
can measure and monitor their progress or contribution towards the SDGs” (UNWTO & UNDP,
2017, p. 56). Nevertheless, measurement, surveillance, control, and regulation lie at the core of
managerialist values developed in an economic and philosophical context where process is sub-
ordinated to output (and profit) (Lynch, 2014).
Another reason for the maintenance of managerialist positions is that the notion of complex-
ity may be recognised as relevant at some scales or situations and not in others. Complexity, for
example, may be recognised as occurring in large scale environmental systems but not in the
behaviours of individual communities, policy actors or people, which from a managerial ecology
perspective may continue to be framed from neo-classical economic perspectives as rational
actors (Bavington, 2011). This becomes especially significant given the emphasis on the role of
the private sector and market solutions in the SDGs. For example, in SDG 9 “Build resilient infra-
structure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation,” the UNWTO
and UNDP (2017, p. 27) emphasise suggested relationships between technology, sustainability,
and the market stating that “The rise in innovation and new technologies has changed the tour-
ism business model, benefitting nations through efficiency gain, enhanced customer engage-
ment and knowledge transfer. By embracing new technologies, countries can create market
 JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 7

awareness, provide location-based services and enrich travel experience.” Such statements are
remarkable for the lack of analysis behind them as to what, for example, “efficiency gains” and
technologically driven business models may mean for changes in tourism employment, especially
the use of zero-hour and part-time contracts, or how the actions of large disruptive informal sec-
tor companies such as Airbnb and Uber affect housing and transport services (Corporate Europe
Observatory, 2018; Mann, 2018; McCurry, 2018; Wachsmuth & Weisler, 2017). Indeed, sustainabil-
ity itself is strongly positioned as an economic or competitive value rather than an ethical or
environmental one: “many companies already seem to acknowledge that their contribution [to
the SDGs] should be integrated into core business and form an inherent part of the creation of
value to succeed on today’s markets” (UNWTO & UNDP, 2017, p. 41).
A key issue of the UNWTO and UNDP (2017) analysis of the SDGs is the extent to which
tourism’s relationship to the SDGs is treated as a social problem. For example, that in regard to
the 2030 Agenda’s five key themes – people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships – it is
suggested that tourism is mostly contributing to issues that relate to “prosperity” and “planet”
(UNWTO & UNDP, 2017, pp. 30–31). Although there is attention to the economic returns from
tourism there is little focus on the distribution of income and economic capital, i.e. who benefits?
Similarly, attention to climate change and marine and coastal issues is primarily invoked as a
physical change, rather than in terms of the social and economic injustices that give rise to the
socio-economic and environmental issues that the SDGs try and address. However, it has long
been recognised that designing interventions and policies without considering the role of exist-
ing institutions or societal responses will likely lead to policy failure (Taylor 1997a, 1997b), yet
this continues to be done. As Taylor (1997a, p. 172) suggested with respect to poverty issues,
that resonate strongly with tourism’s supposed role in poverty reduction and SDG 1 (End poverty
in all its forms everywhere) in particular, “Acknowledging the statistics of inequality does not,
however, constitute an analysis of the dynamics of inequality. In the absence of serious intellec-
tual work – conceptual and empirical – heartfelt caveats about the rich and the poor do not sub-
stantially alter the politics woven into this research.”
In the same way discussion regarding the supposed benefits of tourism to reduce poverty is
limited in policy terms. The UNWTO and UNDP (2017, p. 16) state that the tourism public policy
focus of SDG 1 is “Tourism provides income through job creation at local and community levels.
It can be linked with national poverty reduction strategies and entrepreneurship. Low skills
requirement and local recruitment can empower less favoured groups, particularly youth and
women.” The option of a more progressive tax system is not raised and neither are issue of the
tax avoidance and minimisation strategies of many large corporations with significant interests in
travel and tourism (Bryan, Rafferty, & Wigan, 2017; Schneider, 2018). This is perhaps all the more
surprising given that “tax income from tourism” is explicitly identified by the UNWTO and UNDP
(2017, p. 16) as a means of investing in health care services, although it is possible that they dif-
ferentiate between taxes on tourists (in some circumstances) versus taxes on tourism companies.
The UNWTO has previously come out publicly in opposition to proposals to tax tourism, includ-
ing in Africa (UNWTO, 2014) with then UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, arguing, “A tourism
tax in Africa is a threat to the competitiveness of the region and to all African economies which
increasingly have tourism as a key pillar to their development.” Indeed, the press release stated,
that taxation is “one of the main obstacles to the sustainable development of tourism and avi-
ation in the region” (UNWTO, 2014).
The example of taxation highlights the tensions that exist with respect to how the relation-
ship between sustainable development and tourism is understood. While the UNWTO emphasise
the sustainable development of tourism, the SDGs are about the contribution of tourism to a
broader notion of sustainable development. These are related but they are certainly not the
same thing. For example, potential CSR actions for companies identified by UNWTO and UNDP
(2017) for the SDGs focus on market-oriented actions, i.e. purchasing strategies, improved human
resource management, efficiency improvements and donations. There is little in the form of state
8 C. M. HALL

intervention in terms of greater regulation of the sector or direct charging for environmental
subsidies that are currently borne by residents. Instead, the UNWTO and UNDP (2017) focus on
the development of partnerships to finance sustainable tourism initiatives, suggesting that
“public–private and multi-stakeholder partnerships can strengthen private sector engagement
and galvanise the support needed to achieve the SDGs” (UNWTO & UNDP, 2017, p. 13).
Public–private partnerships are “working arrangements based on a mutual commitment (over
and above that implied in any contract) between a public sector organisation with any other
organisation outside the public sector” (Bouvaird, 2004, p. 200). Austerity measures, funding
uncertainty and changes in philosophies of governance have led to greater use of private sector
organisations for public service delivery, including tourism (Hall, 2014), to improve governance,
broaden donor networks, and/or increase income streams. Although public–private partnerships
have long been criticised in a tourism context for their capacities to exclude local stakeholders
(Hall, 1999), they remain a favoured governmental strategy for tourism development, despite
concerns over equity, cost-effectiveness and long-term liability (Frost & Laing, 2018). In particular,
although they remain criticised for: (a) the problematic ways in which “communities,”
“partnership” and “stakeholders” are defined, delineated and constructed; (b) the lack of align-
ment and integration with local and national development planning policies and processes; (c)
top-down governance, and the absence or erosion of participatory processes and empowerment
goals; and (d) the tendency towards highly conservative development visions (McEwan,
Mawdsley, Banks, & Scheyvens, 2017), they remain a legitimisation strategy of international agen-
cies and government for market oriented policies (B€ackstrand & Kyls€ater, 2014). Indeed, such
issues reflect broader debates surrounding the way tourism is used for development, and discus-
sions on the value of pro-poor tourism and more inclusive forms of tourism.
Notions of inclusive tourism, for example, are usually framed as part of CSR strategies and
activities. Zapata Campos, Hall, and Backlund (2018) suggest that the incorporation of inclusive
tourism concerns within the CSR agenda-setting process is primarily a response to customer con-
cerns, the activities of NGOs, and/or because of negative publicity as these may affect brand
reputation and consumer behaviour. They conclude that sustainability policies and standards,
can be loosely coupled, or decoupled, from internal practices, and have the potential to trigger
further engagement with CSR and some aspects of inclusive tourism, by stimulating both intra-
and inter-firm learning through collaborative processes among competitors. However, they argue
that such measures cannot lead to profound changes in the sustainability practices of the mass
tourism industry if the area is underinstitutionalised. Instead, they stress that sustainability stand-
ards compliance is improved in countries with strong labour and other forms of regulation
(Toffel, Short, & Ouellet, 2015):
Powerful players in the industry, such as large tour operators, have the ability to enable greater
sustainability and more inclusive forms of tourism. But if more coercive institutional pressures, in the form
of laws, regulations and incentives, are not enacted to accelerate this process, it risks perpetuating a limited
adoption of inclusive practices in the mass tourism industry (Zapata Campos et al., 2018, p. 16).

Instead, the ongoing message of international tourism bodies in relation to tourism and sus-
tainable development is that continued focus on improved competitiveness, efficiency, the mar-
ket and growth is the answer, even though it must be done “better” (Zurab Pololikashvili,
Secretary-General of the UNWTO, in UNWTO, 2018).
Tourism’s sustained growth brings immense opportunities for economic welfare and development’, said the
UNWTO Secretary-General, while warning at the same time that it also brings in many challenges. ‘Adapting
to the challenges of safety and security, constant market changes, digitalization and the limits of our natural
resources should be priorities in our common action’ … The UNWTO Secretary-General stressed education
and job creation, innovation and technology, safety and security; and sustainability and climate change as
the priorities for the sector to consolidate its contribution to sustainable development and the 2030
Agenda, against the backdrop of its expansion in all world regions and the socio-economic impact this
entails. To address these issues, Mr. Pololikashvili concluded that ‘public/private cooperation as well as
 JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 9

public/public coordination must be strengthened, in order to translate tourism growth into more
investment, more jobs and better livelihoods (UNWTO, 2018).

Similarly, the previous UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, stated with respect to the tour-
ism and the SDGs: “As the world comes together to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development, the exponential growth of our sector provides tremendous hope that our sector
will remain one that has a truly positive change in the world. It should inspire us all to act,
together, to make this world a better place” (in UNWTO, 2017b, p. 5). The remarkable thing with
these comments is that even though Rifai emphasises the significance of growth in introducing
the relationship between tourism and the SDGs: “2016 was a momentous year for tourism.
International tourist arrivals continued their upward trajectory in their seventh straight year of
above-average growth despite many challenges, reaching 1.2 billion. A comparable sequence of
uninterrupted solid growth has not been recorded since the 1960s” (in UNWTO, 2017b, p. 5).
There is no recognition that despite such growth tourism’s contribution to development goals is
extremely uneven, while also contributing to environmental change, including climate change
(Rutty et al., 2015). This would suggest that tourism growth by itself is insufficient to achieve
many of the SDGs, instead attention needs to be paid to the social, economic and political proc-
esses behind development, rather than just the greater marketisation and financialisation of tour-
ism development, assets and services that the UNWTO advocates.

Managerial ecology and the neoliberalisation of sustainable tourism and the SDGs
The discussion above highlights that the managerial ecology of the main tourism bodies to the
SDGs is profoundly neoliberal in emphasis. Shaping both the relationship of the individual to the
environment as well as its management and, it can be argued, how research should be framed.
Neoliberalism is premised on the assumption that the citizen’s relationship to the state and
others is mediated via the market (Harvey, 2005). Neoliberal managerialism, also referred to as
new managerialism (Clarke, Gewritz, & McLaughlin, 2000; Lynch, 2014), involves governing
through enacting and institutionalising technical changes imbued with market values. In the
case of the UNWTO, there has been a profound shift towards market values over time while
retaining the guise of sustainability. This, of course, also reflects shifts elsewhere in governmen-
tality, but critically it has not made tourism any more sustainable, indeed, as noted at the begin-
ning of this paper, tourism has become less sustainable in absolute terms by most empirical
measures. The focus on greater efficiency in tourism, in terms of per tourist consumption, for
example, makes little difference to the overall absolute sustainability of tourism and the achieve-
ment of the environmental goals of the SDGs if growth in visitor numbers, their total consump-
tion, and the rebound effects from interventions outweighs greater material efficiency
per tourist.
Language defines the world. This is more than issues of defining what constitutes sustainable
tourism, as significant as that might be, it also structures how we are to understand tourism and
its relationship to the SDGs. Neoliberal approaches, such as those portrayed in the UNWTOs
approach to the SDGs, are often presented as apolitical, while at the same time neoliberalism is
the dominant political, economic and social imaginary of contemporary society (Hursh,
Henderson, & Greenwood, 2015), understood as “a way of thinking shared in a society by ordin-
ary people, the common understandings that make everyday practices possible, giving them
sense and legitimacy” (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 34). Although there are varieties of neoliberalism,
there is clearly enough commonality between them to observe that the UNWTO and UNDP
(2017) report and associated UNWTO activities in relation to the SDGs are serving to re-embed
sustainable tourism in different political, legal, and cultural arrangements that privilege business
and corporate interests and the financialisation and marketisation of sustainable development.
As an agency of corporate interest, the activities of the WTTC that promote such a position is
10 C. M. HALL

perhaps understandable. In contrast, the UNWTO is meant to have a wider mandate. The
UNWTO and UNDP (2017) nevertheless reinforce the notion that the private sector and competi-
tive markets should have greater responsibility in the provision of tourism infrastructure and
services and, as such, act to further reinforce the commodification of the environment by tourism
(Bu€scher, Dressler, & Fletcher, 2014). Indeed, Dauvergne and Lister (2013, p. 25) suggest: “Turning
sustainability into eco-business … is altering the nature of environmentalism, increasing its
power to accelerate some forms of change, but limiting what is on the table to question, chal-
lenge, and alter. Sustainability as an idea can be radical: not just calling for changes in the rules
of the game (i.e. market dynamics), but also to the game itself (i.e. the global economy).”
Furthermore, adoption of the language of resilience, especially in relation to SDG13 “climate
action” to further justify certain forms of sustainable development act as a form of “neoliberal
environmentalism addresses the depletion of ecosystems as a global security problem, the only
solution to which is the securitisation and financialization of the biosphere” (Walker & Cooper,
2011, p. 155). Indeed, the overall sense of crisis engendered by the SDGs, sustainable tourism
and, the more recent, overtourism, only appear to encourage the UNWTO and the WTTC to
advocate “more of the same” neoliberal strategies, even though they are not working.

Discussion and conclusions: What hope?

Above all, however, tourism is a sector of hope. With its manifold socio-economic benefits and broad
influence on a diverse range of sectors, tourism is a valuable part of global solutions to these global
challenges and can be even more so. With more than 1.2 billion international tourists today and 1.8 billion
predicted by 2030, the sector keeps on providing opportunities for each traveller and everyone involved in
tourism to contribute to a more responsible, sustainable and inclusive future for all (UNWTO Secretary-
General, Taleb Rifai, in UNWTO, 2017b, p. 5).

The framing of the SDGs through the undifferentiated appeal of sustainable development
talks to a sense of global citizenship. Such appeals are not necessarily illegitimate, particularly in
areas such as human rights, but it does “steer attention away from the difficult politics that
result from differentiated social groups having different interests in causing and alleviating” eco-
nomic, environmental and social problems (Demeritt, 2001, p. 313), which the SDGs are osten-
sibly seeking to address. The approach, shared in much of the research on sustainable tourism,
serves to “tune out” positions that are not in keeping with neoliberal management ecology, such
as those challenging certain assumptions surrounding problem framing and the relative roles of
the market, corporations and the state (Hall, 2011).
Knowledge, and the representation of knowledge in relation to the UNWTO’s official position
on the SDGs and the roadmap for sustainable development to 2030, is not politically neutral and
reflects a particular approach to issues of sustainability and sustainable tourism. As Evans and
Marvin (2006) observe from their research on sustainable cities, knowledges are not additive and
so reducing them to a lingua franca, in this case market-oriented neoliberal managerialism
(Knafo, Dutta, Lane, & Wyn-Jones, 2018; Lawrence, 2017; Peck, 2010), will not of itself enable a
resolution to that engagement. Instead, to be effective, agreement may need to be generated
between actors whose knowledge of an issue is rooted in very different experiences. Indeed,
some resource managers have recognised the potential value of communitarian strategies that
seek to embrace Local Ecological Knowledge, empowering local people, and sought to reduce
socio-economic inequities that have resulted from previous management regimes. However,
“much discussed, it has not been widely implemented” (Wynn, 2011, p. xvi). Nevertheless, such
an approach does not fundamentally question the “need for, or the usefulness of, management”
(Bavington, 2011, p. 10) while stressing the importance of “achieving ‘buy-in’ from resource users
to achieve consensus, avoid conflict, and permit ongoing economic growth” (2011, p. 107).
Engaging different knowledges is therefore fundamentally different to engaging different voices.
To explore this, Rydin (2007) suggests that it is helpful to recast knowledge as knowledge claims,
 JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 11

i.e. a claim to understanding certain causal relationships. Such a situation is extremely important
with respect to the sustainability – tourism relationship, because the UNWTO response both
implicitly and explicitly presents knowledge claims by which tourism is expected to become “a
more sustainable tourism sector by aligning policies, business operations and investments with
the SDGs” (UNWTO & UNDP, 2017, p. 12).
Several reasons may exist for the relative lack of critical assessment of tourism’s role in the
SDGs. First, perhaps many researchers actually believe the stance taken by the UNWTO and
others or, at least, do not actually care, with sustainability not actually being a significant interest
of tourism researchers. If this were the case, then the epistemic community of tourism is domi-
nated by neoliberal market orientations in which sustainability is more often than not framed by
market and private sector oriented solutions in which individuals are “responsible and rational,
moral yet calculating” (Bavington, 2011, p. 10; see also Reade, et al., 2017) in their agency.
However, as discussed elsewhere in relation to the realities of individual capabilities to be sus-
tainable (Whitmarsh, Seyfang, & O’Neill, 2011), there are substantial differences in the govern-
mental and decision-making assumptions surrounding approaches that stress the sovereignty of
individual agency versus those that regard people as holistic elements of larger systems (Hall,
2016). Second, research may be subject to “policy-palatability” (Buttel & Taylor, 1992) in which
research and publications seek to accommodate the dominance of neo-liberal economics and
managerial thinking. Third, policy makers may not only reject the results of research from outside
of their paradigmatic thinking, they may also not fund such research (Shove, 2010).
Policymakers, along with policy partnerships, legitimise lines of enquiry that generate results that
can be accepted and managed, even if they do not necessarily provide the “solution” to policy
problems. The result is a self-fulfilling cycle of credibility (Latour & Woolgar, 1986) in which evi-
dence of the relevance and value of knowledge and research method to policymakers helps in
securing additional resources for that approach (Hall, 2013b). Fully understanding the role that
knowledge plays in expropriation requires expanding the focus of analysis to include not just
the application of research, but also its production and circulation. Indeed, it is notable that the
UNWTO and UNDP (2017) report on tourism and the SDGs contains reference to only three aca-
demic publications (and three BSc/masters theses), although it did receive some academic peer
review. Instead, the vast majority of references are from institutional and industry sources.
Similarly, the endnotes of the high profile report on tourism and overcrowding by WTTC and
McKinsey and Company (2017) contained no academic sources, although some were used in the
text for definitions and three academics were acknowledged for their “contributions.” This is not
to denigrate such contributions but rather to demonstrate the highly restricted nature of what is
incorporated in such works, especially when there is a very long-standing literature on the over-
crowding and carrying capacity issues in tourism (e.g. Ovington, Groves, Stevens, & Tanton, 1974;
Skinner, 1968). Indeed, the conclusion to the foreword of the WTTC and McKinsey and Company
(2017, p. 5) report:
This work is only the beginning; the research is a starting point for ongoing conversations. To solve this
challenge, leaders must be willing to identify and address the barriers (including beliefs, norms, and
structures) that are holding us back from effectively managing overcrowding. And they must look for ways
to compromise: when overcrowding goes too far, the repercussions are difficult to reverse.

Only serves to reinforce the neoliberal managerial stance that frames such complex problems
in terms of management solutions and individual agency.
Haraway (1991) claims that knowledge (science) is about “interpretation, translation, stuttering
and the partly understood. Translation is always interpretive, critical and partial. Here is a ground
for conversation, rationality, and objectivity—which is power-sensitive, not pluralist,
‘conversation’” (1991, p. 195). This stands in stark contrast to the approaches of lead tourism
agencies to the SDGs in which the complexity of socio-ecological systems is regarded as man-
ageable, through neoliberal means, and measurable, and therefore available for use. However, if
12 C. M. HALL

tourism along with socio-ecological systems are genuinely regarded as (irreducibly) complex, and
therefore uncertain, then this position cannot hold (Taylor, 2005). Instead, greater recognition
needs to be given to constraints, including the effects of growth, as well as ethics. Bavington
(2011), among others (Oelschlaeger, 2014), suggests the need for a fundamental rethink of
human–environment relations so that the dominant notion of natural resource stewardship of
the last 150 years moves away from the drive to manage and control nature to one that com-
mits “to living within the limits of the ecosystems of which we are a part” (Wynn, 2011, p. xvii).
Such a position is particularly apt given that this reinforces the need to treat sustainable devel-
opment as a qualitative measure as opposed to a metric of growth. However, to change such
thinking is extremely difficult given the dominance of neoliberal perspectives on governance
and management ecology, and its self-fulfilling cycle of credibility as noted above. To achieve
“third order” change the norms of governance structures require a substantial shift. As Hall
(2011) argued, too much attention is given to the assumption that an institution is “good”
because it facilitates partnership and network development rather than focus on norms and insti-
tutionalisation as first and necessary steps in the assessment of what institutional arrangements
are promoting and their outcomes. This has resulted in enabling certain types of responses to
global environmental problems consistent with this situation, “such as possibilities for the privat-
isation of environmental governance in some areas or the increasing use of market mechanisms.
But at the same time it has made trade-offs much more difficult because it denies that they may
be necessary among values of efficiency, economic growth, corporate freedom, and environmen-
tal protection” (Bernstein, 2002, p. 14). In such a context, research on the policy contradictions
and failures resulting from current approaches may open up the possibilities of informing para-
digm change and new ways of policy learning (Hall, 2011).
Initiatives such as the SDGs fail because they do not confront the way in which neoliberal
rationalities are embedded in many tourism policy practices. The managerial approach advocated
by the UNWTO and others is rooted in the political and economic context of capitalistic resource
extraction by which success means failure, i.e. continued growth in tourism leads to grossly
uneven development. Destination and resource managers, mediated by state agencies, corporate
interests and economic rationality, may “manage” resources into oblivion (Bavington, 2011;
Wynn, 2011). In some ways this could be construed as “Brundtland-as-usual” in the sense that
Brundtland’s ambiguity allowed business and policy-makers to promote sustainable development
by using Brundtland’s support for rapid growth to justify the phrase “sustainable growth”
(Hopwood et al., 2005) or, in the case of the UNWTO and others, “sustainable tourism.” However,
it is possible, if not likely, that given the hegemonic position of neoliberal discourse neither
much of the tourism industry, especially its international leadership, nor many tourism academ-
ics, can see other (Or, if they do, then they are not saying or writing). Instead, there is a need to
encourage greater embrace of post-normal science and governmentalities in order to respond to
the world for the complex place that it is. Embedded in such an approach is recognition that
tourism policy work and research are inherently political when dealing with the uneven distribu-
tion of economic capital and social and environmental justice as well as a need to incorporate
not just a range of voices in tourism policy making for the SDGs but a greater range of knowl-
edge(s). To do so requires ontological shifts as well as more practical turns with respect to know-
ledge generation and transfer processes and increased pressure from researchers, NGOs and
other interested parties to highlight policy failure and hold policy-makers responsible. Indeed,
there may be benefits in greater research on the practices of prefigurative politics, i.e. those
forms of social relations, decision-making, culture, and human experience that are the ultimate
goal of a movement (Boggs, 1977). What otherwise may be framed as being the change you
want to see (Pickerill & Chatterton, 2006).
Responding to complexity, relationality and uncertainty in the policy environment requires
skills of adaptation and coping as well as new knowledge transfer skills. Things become what
they are through interaction with other things—through translation. One strategy from planning
 JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 13

is to develop an “epistemology of multiplicity” (Sandercock, 1998, p. 76) that include different

ways of knowing: through dialogue; from experience; from local knowledge; by learning to read
symbolic and non-verbal evidence; and through contemplative or appreciative knowledge, as
well as more traditional means of acquiring scientific knowledge. Associated with such post-posi-
tivist thinking is the insight that knowledge is not just the domain of the expert, whether a sci-
entist or policy maker, but rather is associated with a variety of actors and knowledges in a
variety of social locations (Bavington, 2011; Rydin, 2007). This means that notions of collabor-
ation need to extend well beyond the narrowly envisaged public-private partnerships that are
emphasised by the UNWTO and UNDP in their assessments of tourism’s contribution to
the SDGs.
Demystifying managerial ecology, tourism knowledge and policy making and “demonstrating
the social relations its construction involves does not necessarily imply disbelief in either that
knowledge or the phenomena it represents” (Demeritt 2001, p. 310). As Demeritt went on to
note, “Given its vital role in helping to make sense of environmental problems such as climate
change, there simply can be no question of doing without science. Rather, the challenge is how
to understand and live with it better” (2001, p. 310). As part of this process the holy grail of
manageability espoused by the UNWTO and others, the belief that all problems can be solved
by exerting greater effort and demanding greater efficiency within the status quo of continued
tourism growth and consumption, necessitates challenge. Indeed, the fundamental challenge the
SDGs and their tourism advocates face if they really want tourism to be a “sector of hope” is
shifting from a growth mentality to one that explicitly commits humanity to prospering and trav-
elling within the limits of the ecosystems of which we are a part.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the anonymous referees for their valuable comments as well as those of the editors
of the special issue.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Michael Hall is a Professor in the Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, University of
Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand; Visiting Professor, School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University,
Kalmar, Sweden; and Docent, Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland. He has written widely
on tourism, regional development, environmental change, sustainability, and resilience. https://scholar.google.co.nz/
citations?user=d5GFhXYAAAAJ&hl=en

ORCID
C. Michael Hall http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7734-4587

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