Sustainable tourism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Sustainable tourism - Essay Example This paper aims to find links of term of sustainable tourism with sustainable development. Moreover, this paper will try to highlight their influence on each other. It was around mid 20th century when experts (Gruder, pp. 81-88, 2007) all around the world increasingly felt that no development witnessed over the time was free from the cost of environmental deterioration. They realized that human species has been developing at an accelerating pace, and this growth has benefited many people as well. However, this development has been happening at the expense of sustainability of this planet. Quite understandably, as responsible citizens of this planet, and keeping in mind the long-term existence of humans on this planet, some steps were essential. In the year 1972, at the Stockholm Conference on Humans and the Environment (Meadows, pp. 1-14, 1972), it was the first time when under flag of United Nations, this topic was brought under consideration. Despite the fact that it was after mid 19th century when the concept of sustainable development came up on the screen in its current form; however, in some form or the other, the concern of balancing human growth with other environmental and external factors has been there since centuries. In context of tourism, one of the earliest examples of tourism were found in Mesopotamia, where the administration made sincere efforts in development of recreational areas, preservation of animals and plants and balancing their reproduction growth with the hunting activity (Butler, pp. 40-45, 1990). Many other great rulers like Alexander the Great and Asoka followed these ideas and tried to implement concept of sustainable development in the field of tourism within their capacity and constraints and research of that time (UBC, pp. 11-27, 2008). One of the most important developments in the field of sustainable developments was presentation of the romantic vision by Hall (pp. 13-34, 1998) in the 19th