Title: Pro-Poor Mountain Tourism
Publisher: Routledge
Editors:
Michal Apollo, Institute of Earth Science, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland
Yana Wengel, Hainan University -Arizona State University Joint International Tourism College, Hainan University, Haikou, China
Thomas Pogge, Department of Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven, USA
This book is now out and available. A good chunk of it (front materials, introduction, bibliographies) can be perused for free here.
Rationale of the Book
Although on a superficial level, it may seem that the quality of people’s lives is improving, common challenges, including food insecurity and livelihood crises, climate action failure, biodiversity loss, social cohesion erosion and democracy erosion, migration, digital inequality and cybersecurity failure, remain and some regions are affected more than others. At the same time, disparities widen within and between countries, and particular areas are more disadvantaged by the geographical conditions, environment, local diseases, and in some cases, unenlightened cultures and political autocracy. Those circumstances are present in most mountain regions around the world. Moreover, the high mountains are inhabited by some of the poorest people on Earth, who are often marginalized politically and economically by national and local administrations. Environmental constraints limit the prospects for agricultural development in many mountain areas. However, about 70% of the world’s mountain population of about 900 million remain rural and continue to depend on natural resources such as land, water, forests and biodiversity. As poverty and development are very complex phenomena, we should aim to eradicate poverty by any means, and tourism may be one of them.
Pro-poor tourism benefits the poor and helps reduce their poverty. Benefits may be economic, but they may also be social, environmental, or cultural. Over the last decade, international, governmental, non-governmental and private sector organizations have recognized that tourism could be a viable tool to address poverty. Thus, it can serve as an instrument to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Researchers worldwide have significantly advanced the ‘pro-poor tourism’ concept in recent decades. However, no book has focused on mountain areas, mountain tourism, and its impact on poverty and inequality reduction. The problem is important because it affects 26% of the area of our planet, whose mountainous areas are home to approx. 900 million people, including the 10% who inhabit high mountain areas.
This book will provide a critical angle on tourism practices in mountain areas and their role as a tool for poverty alleviation and inequality reduction. Mountain tourism refers to various activities in mountain settings, including mountaineering, mountain biking, winter sports activities, snowboarding, rafting, scenic viewing, wildlife viewing, ecotourism, pilgrimage, cultural experiences and health tourism. Appropriately managed mountain tourism might be a key to combating inequality through various tourism developments in mountain regions. Furthermore, nature-based tourism and tourism in mountain areas could provide ‘healing tourism’ opportunities to restore health, which in turn contributes to people’s wellbeing, which is especially relevant in post-pandemic times, when outdoor and mountain tourism increased in popularity. Overall, it is well known that mountain tourism can create sustainable development opportunities worldwide and that community-based tourism products provide more sustainable alternatives in destination areas than traditional mass tourism.
Based on these considerations and previous tourism development models, this book aims to reflect on the potential of mountain tourism for pro-poverty action, to talk about the impacts of mountain tourism from an environmental, sociocultural, and personal perspective and to identify current management policies. Through a series of cases and research from experts in the field, this book assesses the effectiveness of pro-poor mountain tourism as a development strategy. It tackles the issue of whether mountain areas of developing countries benefit from tourism’s potential role in poverty and inequality reduction. Finally, this book links the past and future of mountain tourism and provides policy suggestions for sustainable management in fragile mountain regions.
Based on the chapters’ focus, editors and authors will offer conclusions that address the four competing and sometimes conflicting moral considerations:
1. the economic and other interests of the local mountain dwellers,
2. the economic and other interests of potential visitors,
3. the economic and other interests of the rest of the country and its governing bodies,
4. the global interest in preserving the regional environment, including its biological diversity.
As mountain tourists, researchers, educators and poverty fighters, we genuinely care about mountain regions and the people living there, and in this edited book, we aim to address the most critical challenges. Furthermore, we aim to develop a code of conduct for tourism development of impoverished mountain regions and to suggest sustainable policy recommendations for mountain destinations, with a unique look at developing countries.
Broadly we aim for contributions focusing on (but not limited to):
● growing business opportunities for the poor (small and medium-sized enterprises, family entrepreneurship, young entrepreneurs, start-ups)
● resources and pro-poor mountain tourism: employment opportunities, training and education, capacity building, empowerment (women, people with impairments and disabilities, people from least developed areas)
● enhancing community benefits (community-run companies, income distributions, volunteering opportunities for domestic and international tourists)
● averting environmental degradation that would result from alternative development paths
● mitigating sociocultural impacts of tourism (displacement, globalization’s impact on culture (western habits, western dress), and strengthening education in native languages to promote the cultural identity of indigenous communities Policy suggestions and management practices
● Inclusive, co-creative policy and management practices
● Networking and think tank events to bring the private sector into pro-poor partnerships
● Management practices focused on social sustainability through tourism
Editors
Michal Apollo is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Earth Sciences, the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, a Fellow of Yale University’s Global Justice Program, New Haven, USA, and a Visiting Scholar at Hainan University – Arizona State University Joint International Tourism College, Haikou, China, and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Tourism Research Wakayama University, Japan. He received his M.Sc. and PhD in Earth science in the field of geography at the Pedagogical University of Cracow and PGCert in Global Development at the University of Warsaw. Michal is an enthusiastic researcher, traveller, mountaineer, ultra-runner, diver, photographer, and science populariser. Michal’s unique background allows him to integrate knowledge from the perspectives of various points of view into his research and consultancy work. His areas of expertise are tourism management, consumer behaviours well as environmental and socio-economical issues. In his main research field, he focuses on human presence in high mountain regions and their wellbeing. Currently, he is working on a concept of sustainable use of environmental and human resources, as this is a key to the development, prosperity and wellbeing of all stakeholders. Michal is a board member of the Academics Stand Against Poverty.
Yana Wengel is an Associate Professor at the Hainan University - Arizona State University International Tourism College based in Hainan University in China. Yana takes a critical approach to tourism studies, and her interests include volunteer tourism, non-profit tourism, tourism in developing economies, creative methodologies and mountain tourism. Her doctoral research examined the social construction of host-guest experiences in World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms programme (WWOOFing). She has an interest in creative qualitative tools for data collection and stakeholder engagement. Yana is a co-founder of the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® research community.
Thomas Pogge is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs and founding Director of the Global Justice Program at Yale University. Thomas Pogge is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science, as well as co-founder of Academics, Stand Against Poverty (ASAP), an international network aiming to enhance the impact of scholars, teachers and students on global poverty (http://www.academicsstand.org), and of Incentives for Global Health, a team effort toward developing a complement to the pharmaceutical patent regime that would improve access to advanced medicines for the poor worldwide (http://www.healthimpactfund.org). Pogge received his PhD from Harvard University with a dissertation supervised by John Rawls. Since then, he has published widely on Immanuel Kant and in moral and political philosophy, including various books on Rawls and global justice.