Preface

Many of the issues and challenges associated with sustainable tourism development that were identified in the precursor to this book (Harris, R. and Leiper, N., 1995, Sustainable Tourism: An Australian Perspective, Butterworth-Heinemann, Sydney) are still very much in evidence today. These include: the difficulties associated with coordination and cooperation between the many stakeholders involved in bringing about sustainable tourism; the limitations inherent in the various tourism industry efforts (e.g., voluntary codes of practice) to drive the adoption of sustainable practices; and the resource and knowledge difficulties smallscale enterprises face in their efforts to make their operations ‘greener’. While the tourism industry, policy makers and other stakeholders continue to grapple with these and other matters, it is nonetheless apparent that the shift towards a ‘green paradigm’ based on sustainable
tourism development is occurring apace both within the tourism industry itself and in tourist destination regions. Fuelling this shift is the growing global consensus that, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan has noted that sustainable development is ‘the new conventional wisdom’.

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