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

also be described as a 'deep ecology' or 'ecocentric' or 'bioethics' paradigm. Within
this viewpoint, nature is not regarded as merely a conglomeration of goods and
services of instrumental value to humans, but rather it is seen as having intrinsic or
inherent value in itself. Nature therefore does not have to provide any function or
service to humans in order to be of value. This notion presents constraints for
decision-makers since intrinsic value cannot be quantified and therefore, is unable to
appear on the balance-sheet of a particular development project, policy or
programme. The effective result of this philosophy would be to keep the use of
natural assets to the absolute minimal, so as not to deplete intrinsic value more than
is absolutely necessary. This therefore involves a complete abandonment of the
traditional CBA approach to the assessment of alternative developments, and even
the use of EIA might be seen as irrelevant, since EIA is essentially a tool used within
an anthropocentric context which recognises, implicitly, the right of humans to exploit
natural resources (Hunter and Green, 1995).
The extreme resource-preservationist view embraces only the use of technologies
and products which minimise the loss of intrinsic value. Such an 'if in doubt, do
nothing' approach to development and technological innovation can be criticised as
overly constraining, and would naturally imply zero or negative world economic and
human population growth. With regard to tourism, this might result in a tourist scene
of a rather 'dull shade of green' (Pigram, 1990, p. 6). There is also the added risk
that the conservation of intrinsic value in nature will be at the expense of social
justice and even survival in the developing countries where economic growth is
required to meet basic needs and increase quality of life. However, to the extreme
preservationist, the idea of sustainable development might be seen as inherently
ambiguous, since economic growth, as currently understood, can be regarded as
fundamentally unsustainable. O'Riordan, for example, writes: 'Sustainability is
becoming accepted as the mediating term which bridges the gap between
developers and environmentalists. Its beguiling simplicity and apparently self-evident
meaning have obscured its inherent ambiguity' (O'Riordan, 1989, p.93).
For O'Riordan, and others, sustainable development serves as a profound challenge
to the existing status quo, requiring a break with the traditional growth mentality of
politicians and most existing institutions of economic investment and resource
allocation. As such, it is possible to view development which implies economic
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