the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

infinite or infinitely renewable 'free goods' for human activities like waste disposal.
Negative impacts on these natural elements should be minimised so as to sustain
the overall integrity of the Earth's ecosystems (Hunter and Green, 1995).
What should be clear is that sustainable development is a long-term and global
endeavour. This should also be apparent from the more refined definition of
sustainable development as: "a process of change in which the exploitation of
resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological
development, and the institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both
current and future potential to meet human needs and aspiration" (WeED, 1987,
p.46).
As if such a process of change will not prove to be problematic enough, the concept
of sustainable development itself is by no means unanimously accepted or
interpreted in the same way. However, some interpretation is required before
progress can be made in realising the goals of sustainable tourism development
(Hunter and Green, 1995). To this end, a brief examination of the broader debate
between economic development and resource conservation is focused on in the
following section.
2.12.1 Sustainable Development and Conservation versus Development
Unfortunately, the more one focuses on the concept of sustainable development, the
more illusory its apparent simplicity becomes. The term can be considered to
represent different viewpoints according to one's bearing on the more general
debate between economic development and resource conservation. The concept is
flexible and can be moulded to 'fit' widely differing approaches to environmental
management. There also appears to be little sign of an emergence of an accepted
consensus view on the meaning and policy implications of sustainable development.
Hence, it is perhaps too easy to assume that disparate groups, such as certain
tourism developers and conservationists, will converge on an accepted interpretation
of sustainable development so that the co-operation necessary to achieve
sustainable tourism development will be forthcoming. The gulf that often exists
between certain tourism developers and conservationists, for example, can be
illustrated by considering two 'extreme' 'world-views' on the relationship between
economic development and resource conservation as illustrated by Turner (1991).
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