Sustainable Development

The relationship between sustainable development and tourism is the subject of this article. We shall first have a look at the backgrounds and the reasons behind the concept of sustainability. The debate on sustainable development started because many things in the world were going terribly wrong: diminishing biodiversity, a thinning ozone layer, noticeable greenhouse effects, discrimination against large populations. Eventually there were so many symptoms it appeared to be a serious disease. The principles of sustainability were originally developed as a response to these problems. In order to examine how deeply rooted these destructive elements are in our Western societies and why there is a need to take a look at our environment with different eyes, we shall put things in a historical perspective and give a brief overview of the development of the relationship between people and their environment.