Introduction
The village of Taihuai in China and is threatened by ambitious tourism development. This time it is not foreign tourism companies that are responsible for the misery but the local government itself. Authorities have started to forcefully evict the residents and to demolish their houses in order to succeed with enlisting a nearby tourist destination, the temple Wutai, as an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Original article by Tanya Branigan: Mountain residents bulldozed out of government’s world heritage vision. Published on March 13, 3008 in the guardian.co.uk
Essay by Florian Zielke
Master in Tourism Destination Management student 2008/2009
Tourism is widely considered to be the largest industry in the world. Although this statement is debatable it must be acknowledged that tourism is a significant global economic force. Over the past decades international tourist arrivals have grown considerably, reaching the impressive figure of 800 million travellers in 2007. According to estimations by the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) international arrivals will increase further, reaching 1 billion by 2010 and an impressive 1.6 billion by the year 2020. The emerging economies in Asia and Latin America, in general, and China, India and Brazil, in particular, are expected to contribute to the expansion of international tourist arrivals. However, tourism is not an activity that is evenly pursued across the globe, but is dominated by the richest, mostly Western, nations such USA, Canada, several European countries and Japan.
Presently, Europe still accounts for the majority of the overall international arrivals, but also developing countries have started to gain a more substantial share of the pie. Developing countries, often burdened with high national debts, welcome tourism as an economic activity that generates valuable foreign exchange earnings. However, tourism is not the ultimate panacea and too has potentially negative implications for a destination. These adverse effects of tourism are felt mostly on local and community level and not on national level. In particular, natural and cultural attractions are usually embedded in a local setting, often adjacent or within communities so that tourism unavoidably has implications on the local development.
More and more, local governments are faced with the challenge to balance external, global economic forces on the local development against the views and vision of the local population. Tourism needs to be considered as one of these external, global forces. Global players which often come in form of large transnational organisations have the power of significantly influencing local developments of tourism destinations. Despite the power of these external forces, local governance might stand a chance nevertheless. Milne and Ateljevic (2001) address this global local issue and argue that tourism destinations are not powerless to the global economy and the effects of globalisation, but suggest that local communities and tourism destinations have the possibility to handle these external forces by forming networks between businesses and the private and public sector in order to strengthen their competitive position.
The degree of influence that tourism can have on the local development is embodied by the situation of a small community in China that is located close to the temple Wutai. The temple is one of the most sacred Buddhist sites in China and draws a large number of tourists each year. Chinese authorities aspire to augment this visitor flow by enlisting the temple as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. To meet the requirements of the UNESCO, the Chinese authorities have started to evict the local population and to demolish their houses. Officials feared that the urban sprawl could eat up the beautiful scenery and therefore endanger the project of the enlistment of the temple as a World Heritage Site. Compensations for the local people have been small and in many cases have not materialised at all. Their overall future seems gloomy as all protests and resistance to the process of eviction have failed.
This case is an example for a local community bearing the costs of tourism development at a destination. Without doubt the local government and not the private tourism sector has been the main contributor to this particular situation of the community. However, it needs to be acknowledged that tourism represents a powerful external force that has an impact on local communities worldwide.
Reference:
Milne, S. and Ateljevic, I. (2001) Tourism, economic development and the global-local nexus: theory embracing complexity. Tourism Geographies 3(4), 2001, pp. 369-393
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