Throughout Marine
Ecotourism: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea it has
become manifest that we are dealing with a meta-problem characterized
by highly interconnected planning and policy issues.
Marine
tourism policy and, in turn, the context for planning for
sustainable marine ecotourism, can be regarded as a prime, if
not glaring, example of a meta-problem. This is hardly surprising,
given the fact that each of its components: sustainability,
the marine environment and tourism are, in themselves, meta-problems.
The vast extent and open nature of the marine environment is
characterized by a high degree of connectivity not only within
the sea but also at air/sea and land/sea interfaces. When we
add the complicating factors of open access, common pool resources,
global environmental change, multiple jurisdictions and competing
sectors we can see that policy and planning issues for marine
ecotourism are far from simple as they 'cut across fields of
expertise and administrative boundaries and, seemingly, become
connected with almost everything else'.
DECISION MAKING
As Miller and Auyong declare, 'the problems of tourism
do not fall squarely within a single subdomain of marine affairs,
or within the purview of a single discipline'. Futhermore
planning for marine ecotourism is inevitably cast in the overall
state of affairs of ocean management which has been described
as haphazard, piecemeal and ineffective. Despite, or indeed
perhaps because of, increasing and intensive multiple use of
the oceans, policy making has tended to be dominated by a sectoral
approach which is primarily reactive and formulated on a piecemeal
basis without interagency consultation, resulting in policies
which often have conflicting objectives, resulting in environmental
damage or ineffective implementation. Decision making is thus
highly fragmented and characterized by internal duplication
and overlap, reflecting competition within and between sectors.
Given the almost unparalleled complexities involved, we need
to draw on a range of disciplines in order to better understand
the multiple contexts, issues and viewpoints implicated in marine
ecotourism across the globe. The essential challenge, however,
is to move towards a holistic, integrated approach, rather than
the piecemeal, disjointed, approaches which have characterised
coastal and marine tourism to date.
TOWARD INTEGRATION
To throw light on the complexities of the interlinkages and
interchanges that exist within and between the diversity of
processes which operate in the marine realm and, in turn, dictate
the variability, viability, and vulnerability, as well as the
validity and value of marine ecotourism we have drawn upon a
wide range of disciplines including politics, economics, anthropology,
sociology, biology, geography, oceanography, geology, climatology,
psychology and philosophy.
The innumerable sub-disciplines which have assisted our exploration
range from institutional economics to animal geographies. That
articles on marine tourism in general are published in journals
as diverse as Ecological Economics and The Journal of Environmental
Psychology is a fair reflection of the relevance of diverse
branches of learning to our quest. However, while these varying
perspectives are invaluable in, for example, embracing different
scale levels as in political ecology, or throwing light on tourist
motivation and experience through humanistic psychology, they
are only part of the whole.
Furthermore, the emergence of narrow subdisciplines may be
a reflection of scholars retreating 'into the safety of their
home domain which, in turn, can lead to further specialisation'.
As they go on to argue, 'monodisciplinary analyses of environmental
decisions are unable to reflect the nature of decisionmaking
adequately, leading to 'thin' explanations'.
It could be argued that a multidisciplinary approach is a step
in the right direction insofar as it involves a number of disciplines
coming together with specialists working alongside one another.
However, while it enables issues and problems to be examined
from different perspectives, each disciplinary group will be
working within its own field on a specific aspect of the same
issue, and the end product of this exercise will just be a juxtaposition
of disciplinary outputs. Visser suggests that we need to avoid
this outcome as there will be no systematic attempt at integration.
Farrell and Twining-Ward reiterate Norgaard's call for a 'transformation
from disciplinary to interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary
thinking'.
MAKING RECOMMENDATIONS
Visser in making recommendations for coastal zone research,
recognizes that interdisciplinarity 'has been on the policy
agenda for almost two decades, as the public awareness and the
recognition of the intricate relationships between natural and
social phenomena have become widespread'. It involves specialists
working interactively on a problem, contributing their experience
and disciplinary knowledge by transferring concepts and methods
from one discipline to another. Some advocate an interdisciplinary
approach to environmental decisionmaking because it enables
a more holistic or 'thick' understanding of environmental decisions,
accommodating plural methodologies and methods. While interdisciplinarity
provides for cross-fertilisation of ideas between disciplines,
however, merely to appreciate the interlinkages and interchanges
is not enough: a move towards greater coherence is necessary.
Recognising that the confines of interdisciplinarity mean that
'there is still an enormous gap between recognition of complex
interfaces and the implementation of an integrative approach
to the kind, size and contents of these interelationships',
Visser goes on to advocate a transdisciplinary approach for
coastal zone research. The main assumption of transdisciplinarity
is that it transcends disciplinary divisions and boundaries,
recognising that the real world and its problems are not neatly
ordered into confined disciplines. Consequently, transdisciplinarity
is problem focused: starting from real world problems and drawing
from many disciplines to build knowledge around these. Visser
outlines what she considers to be four distinguishing, advantageous,
features of transdisciplinarity. First she identifies an essential
paradox: because transdisciplinary research challenges existing
assumptions and concepts it forces reflexivity within individual
disciplines, with members questioning their own premises and
theories. Second, it is transparent insofar as it identifies
conflicts and complementarities between disciplines. Third,
it is realistic as it accommodates disjunctures, recognizing
that diverse disciplines will attach differing values to certain
concepts. Visser gives the example of the concept of the system
which appeals to marine ecologists because it embraces the relationship
between individual species, but is viewed by anthropologists
as being too functional and deterministic.
NEW RESEARCH
Finally, transdisciplinarity aims at advancing the research
agenda by identifying 'new research questions and concepts
that move beyond the partner disciplines'. Farrell and
Twining-Ward also advocate transdisciplinarity, arguing that
'the wider, more versatile, research oriented transdisciplinary
approach allows for better understanding of the integration
of natural and social systems'. Visser reasons that 'the
relevance of a transdisciplinary, and thus necessarily a trans-sectoral,
approach is that it tries to move beyond the boundaries, knowledge,
and assumptions of government institutions. Such an approach
necessarily involves other segments and groups of society, with
different and not sectorally determined bodies of knowledge,
ranging from coastal communities and fishers' unions,
to NGOs together with central and decentralized government institutions
and international organisations'. The moves towards ecosystem
based approaches to coastal and marine management across the
globe signify international recognition of the need to maintain
systems in a comprehensive manner to ensure the achievement
of global sustainability.
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