Volume 7, Issue 2, Fall 2010
Ecotourism and Environmental Justice
Steve Vanderheiden, Melanie Sisson
Pages 33-47
Ethically Responsible Leisure? Promoting Social and Environmental Justice Through Ecotourism
Ecotourism has been lauded as a potentially effective means for raising revenue for nature conservation, and certification schemes likewise promise to help to “sustain the well-being of local people” in ecotourist destinations. In this paper, we consider the social and environmental justice dimensions of ecotourism through the certification schemes that define the industry, treating the desire to engage in ethically responsible travel as a necessary but insufficient condition for bringing about these desired ends, and one that requires accurate and trustworthy information in order to effectively realize ecotourism’s potential to engage normative concerns through leisure activities.