Sustainable tourism?

I attended a keynote presentation from David Crowther today in a workshop on sustainable tourism. He was talking about sustainability as better use of natural resources we have and social resonsibility as issues of distribution of benefits so people at large are happy. He seemed to be saying that this doesn't necessarily mean lowering level of economic activity but that there is a lot of evidence that economic development of a society reduces happiness of that society. So do we make changes on grounds of human happiness rather than environmental values or do both come together here? His focus was primarily on social responsibility I think, downplaying the environmental dimension. He made light of the challenge of better use of resources, claiming it was largely a technical issue (does that mean it's therefore a done deal?...not sure what to make of this). But the distribution of benefits he saw as a much harder problem to which he wasn't offering an answer. It was quite a provocative talk with some interesting models and I felt it to be more conceptual than practical. I asked a question about whose values and ethics were in evidence in his kind of sustainable tourism which led on to some interesting discussion. Some insightful comments from Frank Go that the kind of tourism being discussed was mainly a western model to which China was beginning to subscribe but India may choose a different road and it might be helpful to align with the Indian model. Generally quite thought provoking.

It was also the second time in two days that I heard reference to Lovelock's current position as at one extreme in terms of saying its already too late for sustainable development and our level of resource use is completely unsustainable. I heard indirectly that Jonathon Porritt thinks of a spectrum from Lovelock to Lomborg and his position shifts a little one way and another. Good to hear that somehow.