Tourism and Biodiversity:

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1 Abstract The Australian tourism industry relies heavily on Australian biodiversity. It is therefore in the industry s interests to form strategic alliances with conservation groups. Similarly, government tourism portfolios can gain from strategic alliances with environmental portfolios. Impacts on biodiversity can be reduced to some degree through improved environmental management, but this alone is not enough to protect biodiversity. It does not address impacts on biodiversity from other sectors, or from the continuing growth of the tourism sector itself. Hence both tourism and environment interests need to lobby governments to reallocate currently unprotected public lands to tourism. The recent South East Queensland Forests Agreement provides a model for such a strategic alliance. Professor Ralf Buckley is the Director, International Centre for Ecotourism Research, School of Environmental and Applied Science, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. Tourism and Biodiversity: Land-use, planning and impact assessment Ralf Buckley Strategic alliances between tourism and conservation The mainstream tourism industry in Australia is currently beginning to form large-scale strategic alliances with conservation interests. These alliances have considerable potential for mutual benefit, both for sustained growth and prosperity in the tourism sector and for conservation of biodiversity and other components of the natural environment. The Australian tourism industry stands to lose far more than other industry sectors, in a competitive sense, if Australian biodiversity and natural environments are not adequately conserved. The two major industry sectors which depend most strongly on biodiversity are tourism and biotechnology, especially the pharmaceutical sector. Whilst biotechnology companies, however, can generally gain access to genetic material from any part of the globe, Australian tourism businesses rely principally on Australian environments and biodiversity. Given this dependence, it may seem surprising that alliances between tourism and conservation have not developed previously. In the mining sector, for example, direct links between mining interests and environmental groups were established well over a decade ago. Of course, some of these have been used more for marketing and public relations than practical improvements in environmental performance. Even so, however, environmental planning and management have long since become a routine component of development and operations in the minerals and petroleum sec tors, and consultation with conservation groups is commonplace. Even in the forestry industry, THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 10, No. 2, DEC

2 with a long history of c o nf ron ta ti on a g ai ns t conservation interests, direct strategic alliances are now appearing (Starkman, 1999). The reasons for such alliances are of course, purely pragmatic. The industry sectors concerned have recognised that environmental issues are a mainstream political concern throughout electorates at all political levels, and that direct alliances with recognised conservation groups are a very effective way to defuse or indeed harness such concerns. Equally, conservation groups have come to appreciate that direct engagement with the private sector, at national and transnational levels as well as individual corporations, is an effective and prac tical complement to political lobbying with government agencies. These considerations are equally cogent in the tourism sector, yet the tourism industry has been slow to follow suit. There are various possible reasons: (1) Tourism is a relatively young and uncoordinated industry sector. This argument, however, has been put forward repeatedly over the past decade (e.g., at GLOBE 90) and is losing force. (2) The companies which construct tourism accommodation, fixed-site activities and infrastructure generally sell them to other companies to operate. Most operators see themselves as part of the tourism sector, and many are aconcerned about environmental management. The construction companies and their principals, however, see themselves as property developers with no long-term links to the land they develop. (3) Although the tourism industry has had an internal advocate for the environment in the form of the ecotourism sector, until recently this has been treated by mainstream tourism corporations and industry associations either as a marketing tag or a small specialist niche market. (4) It is only recently that the economic size and market significance of the ecotourism sector, and the broad relevance of ecotourism principles, has been generally appreciated by the mainstream tourism industry. (5) It is only recently that the tourism industry has begun to acknowledge its own environmental impacts, includ ing those on biodiversity; and hence to appreciate importance of environmental planning and management. (6) Except in a very few instances, it is only recently that overcrowding by commercial tourism in national parks and other protected areas in Australia has become so severe that land managers have been compelled to impose restrictions on any further growth or development. Even though this has been commonplace in other countries for many years, it is only now that the Australian tourism industry has begun to appreciate that prime natural environments attractive to tourists are in limited supply, and access for tourism development is by no means automatic. Hence direct involvement of the tourism industry in land-use planning is critical to the future of the industry. (7) There is a strong but recent trend, in urbanised western nations such as Australia, for commercial nature and adventure tourism to take over many activities formerly conducted as private outdoor recreation, leading to particularly rapid growth in tourism demand for access to natural environments. (8) Because of the political and legislative history of World Heritage in Australia, the tourism industry has been able to gain easy, and even subsidised access to prime natural areas such as the Wet Tropics of Queensland, Great Barrier Reef, Central Eastern Rainforests, Southwest Tasmania, Kakadu, Shark Bay and many other World Heritage areas without taking any direct role in land-use planning or political negotiations. Lobbying has been carried out entirely by conservation groups, and the tourism industry has benefited as a free rider or at best an accidental hero (Van Osterzee, 1999). Certainly, the economic returns from tourism were put forward by conservation groups as one of the justifications for protecting these areas from higher-impact land uses such as mining, logging and farming. But the tourism industry itself did not take an active role in the political debate. This is now changing. In August 1999, for the first time in Australia, the tourism industry joined conservation groups in lo bbying the Pre mier of Queensland to protect remaining old-growth forests in the southeast part of the State from continuing logging. The Queensland branch of Tourism Council Australia, together with high-profile tour operators such as Mimi Macpherson and tourism research organisations such as the Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism and the International Centre for Ecotourism Research, joined the Rainforest Conservation Society and The Wilderness Society in an open letter to the Premier, published as a full-page advertisement in the State s main newspaper, The Courier Mail. This occurred during the final 48 THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 10, No. 2, DEC. 99

3 stages of negotiation for the Southeast Queensland Regional Forest Agreement, in which both TCA and Tourism Queensland, the State Government tourism portfolio, had been ac tively involved. It followed the 11thhour collapse of a draft agreement. Following publication of the open letter, the South-East Queensland Forest Agreement between conservation groups, the timber industry and the State Government was signed on 16 September This has yet to be endorsed by the Commonwealth Government, to become a formal Regional Forest Agreement, but will take effect irrespective of Commonwealth involvement (Keto & Scott, 1999). It is timely, therefore, to consider why and how the Australian tourism industry should become more actively involved in strategic alliances with environmental groups, and in the formation of Commonwealth and State government policy, legislation and practice relating to the conservation of biodiversity and natural environments. This may include, for example: Australian implementation of international conventions such as the International Biodiversity Convention and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES; national environmental legislation such as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth); State national parks and endangered-species legislation and regulations, commonly combined; routine frameworks for landuse planning, environmental impact assessment and development control; one-off political planning exercises such as the Ecologically Sustainable Development Working Groups, the Resource Assessment Commission, and the Regional Forest Agreements. Benefits of biodiversity to tourism From a tourism industry perspective, biodiversity is a tourist attraction, not a market segment. Its economic significance to the tourism industry is large, but difficult to quantify precisely. Whilst tourism is commonly thought of as a service industry, in reality tourism products are bundles of goods and services, with the goods at least as important as the services. Tourism has been described as renting out other people s environments ; because it is the environment that provides tourism attractions such as scenery, health, unusual plants a nd w il dli fe, a nd i nt ere s tin g cultures. Biodiversity is a significant factor in a wide range of tourism product purchasing decisions. Obvious examples include visits to zoos and wildlife reserves; wildlife watching, birdwatching, whalewatching and dive tours; and consumptive tourism such as hunting and fishing tours. These, however, are by no means the only examples. Biodiversity is also a critical product component for tourists who travel to look at scenic landscapes, most of which owe their particular character to vegetation and fauna as well as underlying terrain. And in a much broader conte xt, undisturbed ecosystems and their plant and animal communities are critical in maintaining the clean air, clean water and healthy environments which are a key tourism attr action in many destinations. Biodiversity is thus a key component of global tourism. In Africa and Latin America, biodiversity is major marketing focus. In Australia, Asia and USA it is a hidden product component, but significant nonetheless. Whilst biodiversity is not a tourism sector in itself, therefore, it is a primary attraction or critical underpinning for a relatively distinct and quantifiable market sector, namely nature, eco and adventure tourism, NEAT (Buckley in press). It is also a significant, but perhaps not critical component of other tourism sectors. As a conservative first approximation, therefore, the economic significance of biodiversity to the tourism industry can be estimated from the size of the NEAT sector. This varies between countries. In countries such as New Zealand and Costa Rica, effectively the entire tourism industry is within the NEAT sector. In countries such as the USA, it appears that about half the tourism industry falls within the NEAT sector (Mallett, 1998). In Australia, the NEAT sector is conservatively estimated as at least 25% of the industry, i.e. $10 billion p.a.; and perhaps much more. A survey of international visitors in 1996 found that those who visited natural areas as major destinations spent $6.6 billion p.a. (Blamey & Hatch, 1998). A national tourist survey in 1998 found that 33% could be characterised as strong ecotourists, and a further 33% as weak ecotourists, i.e., nature and adventure tourists (Tourism Queensland, 1998), suggesting that from the demand site, two thirds of Australian tourists are in the NEAT sector. A supply-side estimate (Buckley in press), derived from a survey of operators rather than tourists, indicated that the NEAT sector is work at least $7-15 billion p.a., i.e. about 25% of the entire industry. International expert opinion (Cockerill, 1999a, 1999b) suggests that it may well make up a significantly higher proportion. Perh a ps th e be st-k now n biodiversity icon in Australian THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 10, No. 2, DEC

4 tourism, the koala, has been estimated to be worth around $1 billion p.a. to the Australian economy (Hundloe & Hamilton, 1997). Other icon species such as kangaroos, fairy penguins, crocodiles and frilled lizards may well have equal economic significance for tourism, but this has not been quantified. The value of tourism in national parks has been estimated at around $1 billion p.a. for Queensland (Kinhill Economics, 1998) and $340 million p.a. for Victoria (Read Sturgess & Assoc., 1999). Overall, therefore, it is clear that the Australian NEAT sector, fundamentally reliant on protected areas and their biodiversity, is already a major component of mainstream tourism in Australia. annually in international marketing, typically with campaigns that rely heavily on Australian biodiversity icons. Additionally, growth in NEAT includes domestic as well as international market segments, and domestic travel is less susceptible to international fashions. Quite apart from marketing issues, however, growth in the Australian NEAT sector now faces significant constraints on land access and infrastructure. Protected areas are designed for conservation first and public recreation second. Large-scale commercial tourism, especially that involving major infrastructure, is generally not compatible with the primary accommodation, infrastructure and tours, providing a service which is not feasible within public protected areas. This is the model used extensively in Africa, for example, where many famous and highly profitable game lodges and safari operations are located in private lands. In parallel with these opportunities, the Australian tourism ind ustry, and its biodiversity, face a significant threat from the current and increasing overcrowding in particular national parks, which creates impacts on both the natural environment and the visitor experience, especially in prime areas. As these impacts lead park and reserve managers to rely increasingly on quotas and Strategic position of biodiversity-based tourism Global growth in NEAT, and biodiversity-based tourism in particular, is associated with broad-scale social trends towards increasing urbanisation (Buckley, 1998a). Effectively, the NEAT sector as a whole receives free marketing in the form of nature documentaries on television, and similar sources of information; s ince t he s e r ep ea te dly sho w potential tourists the natural environments, and their plants and animals, which form the basis of nature tourism products. Countries such as Australia benefit particularly because its flora and fauna, environments and cultures are so spectacularly different from those elsewhere in the world. Equally, however, one of the weaknesses of NEAT as an economic sector is that international nature tourism is now highly subject to fashion. Australia may be a sought-after destination one year, but not necessarily the next. To counter this, Commonwealth and State government tourism portfolios already spend large sums Growth in the NEAT sector faces constraints specifically due to land access and infrastructure. goals. The tourism industry hence needs access to other public or private land in the same way as other major industry sectors; as benefits its economic significance. These constraints are currently creating both opportunities and threats. For the commercial tour sector, there are significant opportunities associated with the trend from private recreation to commercial outfitters. For public land management agencies responsible for land outside protected areas such as State forests, local government lands, vacant Crown lands etc. tourism now provides a highv alue u se. An d for priv ate landowners with relatively undisturbed and scenic natural environments, unusual ecosystems or icon species, there are major commercial opportunities to construct low-volume, highyield upmarket tourism restrictions, the significance of permitting and quota allocation systems, preferential use agreements, etc, will continue to grow. The significance of these patterns and trends differs between stakeholders. For individ ual tour ism firms, there are commercial advantages to be gained from restrictions on land access, if the company can secure preferential access rights and effectively use the public sector to maintain its competitive advantage. For the tourism industry as a whole, however, opportunities are needed for new operators and expansion, as well as increased profitability of existing operators. For public land managers the primary concern is to limit the overall impacts of visitors, both private and commercial. Quotas, restrictions and operator accreditation provide some of the 50 THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 10, No. 2, DEC. 99

5 tools available (Buckley, 1999a, 1999b). In addition, land managers typically have a range of constraints which they must take into account in managing commercial tourism. Parks agencies, for example, may be required to provide equitable access to all visitors. Forestry agencies may have historical contracts to comply with. And all public land management agencies may need additional funds for visitor infrastructure and management. For the Australian NEAT sector as a whole, therefore, there seem to be three main strategies to provide for growth and profit without damaging the protected area estate and its biodiversity resources: reduce per capita i m p a c t s ; through best-practice environmental management; increase p er capita p r o f i t s ; through tourism products with low volume and high returns, using managed scarcity to provide exclusivity; and increase available land resources by allocating public lands outside the protected areas estate, but of high value for tourism (and often also for biodiversity conservation) to the tourism industry: either by changing land-use planning objectives and management practices of current land management agencies, or by reallocating land to new public land management agencies concerned with tourism and recreation. Impacts of tourism on biodiversity The impacts of tourism on biodiversity may be considered at various different scales: impacts associated with longdistance travel by air, sea, rail and road; these include diffuse impacts on biodiversity from air and water pollution and the construction and operations of airports, port facilities, roads and rail corridors; impacts from urban tourism accommodation and associated facilities; these include diffuse impacts on biodiversity associated with power and water supply, materials consumption, and waste, wastewater and sewage discharge; localised impacts on biodiversity from development of resorts, facilities and infrastructure at greenfields sites in various locations and land tenures; localised on-ground impacts, both direct and indirect, of general nature, eco and adventure tours and associated activities; direct impacts of specialist NEAT tours with a primary product focus on particular plant or animal species; impacts of recreational activities with a deliberate consumptive component, such as hunting, fishing, shell collecting, plant collecting, and purchase of souvenirs or artifacts made from plant or animal parts; and indirect role of tourism, in some countries, in contributing to o r en co ur ag ing t rad e in endangered plant and animal species, both legal and illegal, and including plant seeds, animal parts, artifacts, medicinal preparations etc. Engine exhausts and associated large-scale atmospheric impacts, including ozone depletion and greenhouse warming, have the potential to cause very large-scale d isruption to ecosystems and biodiversity globally. Measures to reduce such impacts generally require coordination between industry sectors and between nations; e.g., in compliance with the Montreal Protocol on Ozone- Depleting Substances. One issue which is of considerable direct interest to the tourism industry, however, in addition to its global environmental significance, is the efficiency of transport networks; e.g.,, the time which aircraft spend in holding patterns at major airports, waiting to land. Equally, however, the tourism industry needs to ensure that additions to transport infrastructure, such as new or expanded airports, roads, rail links, etc do not in themselves create impacts on biodiversity through clearance of vegetation, disturbance to animal habitat, crossing or dissecting protected areas, interruption to animal movements, and noise. This was a significant issue for example, in relation to the recently constructed light rail link from Brisbane to the Gold Coast. It would be a great deal more significant for the mooted Very Fast Train (VFT) link between Melbourne, Sydney and perhaps Brisbane (Buckley, 1990). For urban tourism accommodation in larger towns and cities, impacts on biodiversity are also largely indirect, as noted above; and are generally indistinguishable from those of urban development as a whole. For tourism accommodation in smaller towns, direct impacts on biodiversity may occur through ribbon or cluster development in environments of high conservation value, particularly through clearance of vegetation for new residential sub-divisions or resort-residential developments. This is often associated with the proliferation of holiday houses and apartments in small towns at the early stages of their development as a tourist destination. It has occurred extensively, for example, in the coastal heathlands of the subtropical and temperate Australian seaboard, as small fishing settlements have evolved THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 10, No. 2, DEC

6 into significant holiday destinations. It has also occurred in the subalpine mountain-gum woodlands of the Australian alps, in association with ski fields. Impacts on biodiversity are particularly acute for new mainstream tourism developments in greenfields sites still supporting native vegetation or marine life. Destination resorts, resort-residential developments and large-scale tourism infrastructure and non-residential attractions generally all require clearance of substantial areas of land, with partial or complete removal of plant species and animal habitat. Where these areas support rare or endangered species, clearance may lead to reduction of local populations of these species below minimum viable levels, with consequent effects for the overall conservation status of the species. Even for species which are not currently endangered, any reduction in local populations contributes to cumulative loss in genetic diversity. Vegetation clearance is not the only mechanism for impacts on biodiversity from greenfields developments. Noise both during construction and operations, presence of buildings and people, and barriers to animal movement such as roads and fences, can all make the development area unavailable as habitat for particular species. Since populations of most animal species, at least vertebrates, are limited by habitat characteristics such as food, refuges, shelter, breeding sites and territorial space, loss of habitat generally translates to a reduction in the population. These impacts are of particular concern for tourism developments within or immediately adjacent to national p arks and other protected areas, including Biosphere Reserves and some World Heritage Areas, for which conservation of biodiversity is one of the primary land-use goals. Undisturbed ecosystems outside protected areas may contain equally significant reservoirs of biodiversity, but are commonly subject to conservation threats from other land uses. Biodiversity within parks is generally protected from these threats, so it is particularly significant if the parks are threatened by tourism. Large-scale visitor and tourism facilities in and around Australian national parks may be considered in four main categories. Those designed, and generally also constructed and operated, by the parks services themselves. Typically these do not include accommodation. Facilities, including accommodation, which are designed, built and operated by private tourism companies on park land, in accordance with park management plans. Private facilities on private land either within or immediately adjacent to parks, where the park provides the attraction for tourists, but the facilities are not on park land. Such facilities are generally not subject to park jurisdiction; even though they may create impacts in the park through waste discharge, water consumption, noise, increased traffic and visitor numbers, etc. Note that some facilities in this category were constructed before the adjacent park was declared, whereas other were constructed much later. New facilities which involve allocation of park land to private tourism development, either through leases, land sales, land swaps etc, and which would effectively reduce the area of the park available for biodiversity conservation. Developments in the last category, and also some in the second to last, commonly generate significant public controversy when proposed. Examples in Australia include: ski resorts in the Australian Alps National Parks a number of island resorts in the Great Barrier Reef province and Whitsunday Islands, Qld. a proposed resort and golfcourse in Wilpena Pound, National Park, SA in the early 1990 s the proposed Woodwark Bay resort and golfcourse in Dryander NP in 1990 the resort-residential development and marina between Hinchinbrook Island NP and the Wet Tropics of Queensland WHA in the late 1990 s the proposed Naturelink cablecar through Springbrook NP in the Central Eastern Rainforests Reserve (CERRA) WHA in 1999 In addition to land clearance, one of the main environmental issues for such developments is marine and freshwater pollution from discharges which include nutrients, metals, pathogens, and toxic chemical compounds such as solvents. Even without accommodation and large-scale facilities, nature and adventure tours which are not designed and managed for minimum impact may have considerable impacts on biodiversity and other components of the natural environment. A number of commercial 4WD tours marketed from Australia s Gold Coast, for example, are aimed at thrill-seeking international visitors with little or no prior experience in 4WD vehicles, and exploit the handling capabilities of these vehicles in high-speed off-road bush bashing (Buckley & Araujo, 1997). The same applies to at least some of the so-called tag-a-long 4WD tours, where participants drive their own 4WD 52 THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 10, No. 2, DEC. 99

7 vehicles in single file behind a lead vehicle driven by a paid guide. Hunting and fishing tours, including catch-and-release sport fishing and game fishing, clearly have impacts on the wildlife and fish species targeted. Whether or not this reduces local populations of these species depends on a wide range of factors, including the ecological characteristics and controls of the species populations, hunting or fishing intensity and management, and other anthropogenic impacts. Photographic safaris and wildlife watching tours may also affect the animals concerned if not managed for minimal impact: through crowding; noise, visual and scent disturbance; modification to interspecies interactions such as predatorprey relationships; and modifications to intraspecies interrelationships such as breeding behaviour and care of offspring. Similarly, wildflower tours may cause impacts on plant biodiversity if participants collect plants or fruit, whether legally or illegally; or disturb animal dispersal or pollination agents. All forms of nature, eco and adventur e tours may also produce indirect impacts on biodiversity, some obvious and others subtle (Buckley, 1996; Liddle, 1997; UNEP, 1999), through, e.g., introduction of weeds and plant pathogens; changes to the fire regime; water consumption and contamination, particularly from sewage and human waste; and air pollution, es pe ci al ly fr o m tr an spor t vehicles. Managing tourism impacts or biodiversity There are many possible tools for managing the impacts of tourism on biodiversity, with different tools operating most effectively at different scales. The first and often overriding issue, which affects the impacts of any development on biodiversity, is simply where it is located. At the broadest scale, planning and land-use legislation, including national parks legislation, is intend ed to preclude high-impact development in ar eas of high conservation value. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes are intended to ensure that where a particular type of development is potentially permitted by land-use constraints, its likely impacts can be assessed in detail by government agencies, other industry sectors, community groups and the general public before a development decision is taken. The integration of planning, parks and EIA law is There is a diversity of indirect impacts on biodiversity. far from ideal in most countries, Australia included, but moves to improve strategic and cumulative environmental assessment (Buckley & Warnken, 1999, Buckley in press b) are beginning to address these deficiencies. In the past, the technical quality of tourism EIA in Australia has generally been rather low (Warn ken & Bu ckl ey, 1 998), except in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park; but EIA is still a critical tool for managing the environmental impacts of large-scale tourism development, including impacts on biodiversity. Once the location of a new tourism project is determined, impacts can be reduced through best-practice design, construction and operation, including architecture, engineering and management. There are now a wide range of initiatives, awards THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 10, No. 2, DEC

8 and guidelines for best-practice environmental management in tourism. Some early examples included Canadian Pacific Hotels Green Partnerships program (Troyer, 1992), the International Hotels Environment Initiative, and the British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow Awards. More recent examples from the Australian tourism industry include the TCA/CRC Tourism Being Green series (Talacko, 1998; Basche 1999), and TCA s policy document Our Heritage Our Business (TCA, 1999). The Co mmonwealth Government tourism portfolio has also produced a number of practical design and engineering guidelines such as Best-Practice Ecotourism and Tourism Switched On. Analogous reports and guides have also been produced by non-government organisation: for example, the Green Host Effect by Conservation International (Sweeting et al., 1999). One tool which has received particular attention recently is environmental accreditation, sometimes loosely referred to as ecolabelling. This is applicable at all scales of development, with different criteria for different types of activity. There are many such schemes internationally (UNEP, 1998). In Australia the best known and most relevant are the National Ecotourism Accreditation Programs, NEA P, and the recently reconstruc ted Green Globe 21. To be effective, any environmental accreditation scheme must be meaningful to regulators and clients: it needs substantive c riteria against which tourism enterprises can be tested, and a routine audit program to verify performance claims and remove accreditation from ventures which no longer merit it. For tourism in parks and other protected areas, management of impacts requires a suite or toolkit of approaches (Buckley, 1999a) which takes into account that different tourist activities cause different impacts in different environments, different types of impacts have different ecological significance in different ecosystems, and different management tools may be more or less effec tive in different regions and societies. A range of best-practice and minimal-impact educational materials have been produced by various land management agencies, including Parks Services in most Australian States; educational organisations such as Leave-No- Trace Inc. in the USA (NOLS, 1997); and in some cases, individual tour operators such as Willis Walkabouts in Australia. The approaches outlined above can do a great deal to reduce the per capita impacts on biodiversity. For the future of both the industry and the environment, however, BPEM is necessary but not sufficient. Tourism in land-use planning The tourism industry needs a more active voice in land-use planning, for two major reasons. The first is in its own direct interest, to secure access to land where the tourism industry can continue to grow. As noted earlier, some economic growth in existing land areas is achievable by strategies to reduce per capita impacts, through best-practice environmental management, and improve per capita profits, through product design and marketing strategies. These approaches, however, can only go so far and continued growth will require access to additional lands of high tourism value outside the current protected area estate. The second reason is less direct, but equally significant in the long run. One of the most important ways in which tourism could contribute to sustainable development would be to offset and if possible outweigh its environmental costs, through the unavoidable impacts outlined above, with environmental benefits; and one of the most significant environmental benefits would be to catalyse changes in land use from higherimpact industries, such as forestry, farming, fishing and mining, to tourism and conservation (Buckley, 1998b). There seem to be three main possible approaches for a greater involvement by the tourism industry in land-use change: tourism development on private land; purchase of land for tourism and conservation, through strategic alliances between tourism corporations, conservation groups and government agencies; tourism industry involvement in land-use planning and allocation for public land; and Tourism development on private land is already widespread internationally. It includes: private land with particular tourism attractions, such as waterfalls or wildlife colonies; private zoos and conservation parks funded by charging entrance fees, such as Earth Sanctuaries; private land adjacent to national parks and other public lands of high tourism value, where the principal attraction is on public land and the adjacent landholder can reap economic benefits through providing infrastructure; and farm tourism, where the tourism business is run in parallel with primary production, initially as a sideline but often evolving to the major economic activity. Purchase of land for tourism and conservation is rare in Australia but relatively common overseas. Possible mechanisms include: 54 THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 10, No. 2, DEC. 99

9 tourism development on lands owned by non-government organisations such as The Nature Conservancy ; debt-for-nature swaps where tourism companies provide funds and non-government organisation negotiate the transaction; and government purchase of land for recreational purposes, in partnership with the private and/or voluntary sectors. The last of these is by no means a new concept from a government perspective. City parks, for example, are intended primarily for recreation rather than conservation. Many parks were established principally for recreation, even though they do also have significant conservation value. Belair National Park in the Adelaide Hills provides an example in Australia. In Queensland, both the Regional Open Space Program and the illfated Recreation Areas Management Act were based on this philosophy. The critical issue is that the tourism industry has not in the past taken an active role in promoting this approach. higher level, tourism industry associations can lobby State and Commonwealth Government agenc ies directly, or via government tourism portfolios, to start new planning processes, establish new legislation, or modify government budget allocations. Conclusions The Australian tourism industry, along with most of the tourism sector worldwide, relies heavily on Australian biodiversity. It stands to gain more than other industry sectors if biodiversity is protected, and it stands to lose more than other industry sectors if biodiversity is lost. The tourism industry is taking steps to reduce its impacts on biodiversity through improved environmental management, but this alone will not be enough, since other industry sector may also have major impacts, and since tourism pressures on protected areas continue to grow faster than impacts can be reduced. It is therefore critical for the Australian tourism industry to take an active role in land-use planning and allocation. This includes tourism on private land. Most important, however, are strategic alliances between tourism and conservation interests, to lobby governments to reallocate currently unprotected public lands to tourism and conservation rather than other industry sectors. Acknowledgments A previous version of this paper was presented at the Earth Alive Tourism Summit in Sydney on 9 September 1999, organised by the National Centre for Tourism on behalf of the Biodiversity Advisory Committee, Environment Australia, Australian Commonwealth Government. This, then, is the final and perhaps most significant issues. The tourism industry could take a much more active role in landuse planning and policy for public lands. This applies worldwide, but particularly in Australia in view of the current Regional Forest Agreement process. It also applies at all scales: local tour operators for local issues, and State and national associations in regional, state and national policy formation. There is a wide variety of mechanisms, some formal and others informal. The most straightforward is simply to take the opportunity to lodge submissions or responses in routine land-use planning processes, including public environmental impact assessment; and one-off land-use planning exercises such as the Regional Forest Agreements. At a References Basche, C. (1999). Being Green is your business. CRC Tourism, Gold Coast and Tourism Council Australia, Sydney. Blamey, R., & Hatch, D. (1998). Profiles and motivation of naturebased tourists visiting Australia. Australian, Bureau of Tourism Research Occasional Paper 25. Canberra: BTR. Buckley, R.C. (1990). Humungous development syndrome. EIA News, 12, 6-7. Buckley, R.C. (1996). Sustainable tourism: Technical issues and i nf orm atio n ne eds. Annals of Tourism Research, 23, Buckley, R.C. (1998a). Ecotourism megatrends. A u s t r a l i a n International Business Review, Dec 1998, Buckley, R.C. (1998b). Can tourism yield net global environmental benefits? Abstr. National Ecotourism Conference, Margaret River, WA. Buckley, R.C. (1999a). Tools and indicators for managing tourism in parks Annals of Tourism Research, 26, THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 10, No. 2, DEC

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