The territorial limitation of islands makes them more aware of the limits of their resources in the face of tourist overexploitation. In the critical bibliography, however, two almost opposing trends can be identified: those who detect the risks of tourist overexploitation of islands, and those who identify tourism as a possibility for development that insularity could hinder for other tourism industries. The concept of ‘resilience’ is often discussed as a specific virtue that would enable tourism to support the social and ecological footprint more than other environments and diversify the knowledge needed to sustain itself with its own resources (McLeod; Dodds, Butler 2021). The need to “support” this footprint, even when it threatens the social, ecological and cultural balance of the environment, is related to the possibility of “development” of environments that have not been able, by their peripheral or remote condition, to become industrialised. According to Dimitrios Buhalis (1999), tourism would reduce the prosperity gap between developed and underdeveloped countries. This decrease may have as a counterpoint, he also admits, inequality in access to the capital generated by tourism when the majority of residents participate only in the wealth of tourism from precarious jobs, their own or, in general, conditioned by the multinationals that influence tourism demand, access to the island and even – if the political power allows it – its planning and accessibility. Somewhat more nuanced and critical views are those who consider the fragility of many island ecosystems subjected to a great exhaustion of resources – for example, water – due to the massive arrival of visitors. In considering the impact of climate change on island tourism environments, starting from the particular case of Malta and Mallorca (Calvià), Rachel Dodds and Ilan Kelman (2018) propose different action plans needed to protect environments to make them safe for tourism, but without questioning how tourism, in fact, also contributes to climate change and the natural degradation of many of the environments in which it occurs. Sustainability is thus defined not only as a necessity of tourism in relation to the territory in which it operates, but as a strategy which allows adaptation to changes caused, among other factors, by tourism itself.
References:
Buhalis, Dimitrios (1999). “Tourism in the Greek Islands: The issues of peripherality, competitiveness and development”, International Journal of Tourism Research, 1(5), 341-359.
Dodds, Rachel, i Kelman, Ilan (2008). “How climate change is considered in sustainable tourism policies: A case of the Mediterraneal Islands of Malta and Mallorca”, Tourism Review International, 12, 57-70.
NcLeod, Michelle, Dodds, Rachel, and Butler, Richard (2021). “Introduction to special issue on island tourism resilience”, Tourism Geographies, 23: 3, 361-370.