The Tourism-Disaster-Conflict Nexus

Andreas Neef, Jesse Hession Grayman

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787432789
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume sheds light on the complex linkages between tourism, disaster and conflict. In many countries, tourism crises have been precipitated by natural disasters. At the same time, the tourism industry has often been assigned a pivotal role in the reconstruction and recovery efforts. Prospective tourists have been lured into supporting post-disaster rehabilitation simply through visiting disaster-affected areas. Yet, prioritising the tourism sector in the recovery process may have unintended consequences: less touristic areas that have been severely affected by the disaster may receive less humanitarian relief support. Disaster recovery processes in the tourism industry can also be highly uneven, as multinational hotel chains tend to recover more swiftly and increase both their market share and their control over important resources. Politically well-connected tourist operators and wealthy local elites tend to exploit distorted recovery governance mechanisms and take advantage of the legal and institutional uncertainties triggered by disasters. Insecure, customary land rights of ethnic minority groups and indigenous people may be particularly prone to exploitation by opportunistic tourist operators in the aftermath of a disaster. When disasters strike settings of pre-existing conflict, they may exacerbate the situation by increasing competition over scarce resources and relief funds, or they may catalyse conflict resolution following an intolerable excess of additional suffering among fighting parties. Tourism ventures may offer post-conflict livelihood opportunities, but potentially trigger new conflicts. Disasters may instigate a morbid "dark tourism" industry that invites visitors to enter spaces of death and suffering at memorials, graves, museums, and sites of atrocity.

CHAPTER 1

CONCEPTUALISING THE TOURISM–DISASTER–CONFLICT NEXUS

Andreas Neef and Jesse Hession Grayman

ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces the tourism–disaster–conflict nexus through a comprehensive review of the contemporary social science literature. After reviewing conceptual definitions of tourism, disaster and conflict, the chapter explores various axes that link through this nexus. The linkages between tourism and disaster include tourism as a trigger or amplifier of disasters, the impacts of disasters on the tourism industry, tourism as a driver of disaster recovery and disaster risk reduction strategies in the tourism sector. Linkages between tourism and conflict include the idea that tourism can be a force for peace and stability, the niche status of danger zone or dark heritage tourism, the concept of phoenix tourism in post-conflict destination rebranding, tourism and cultural conflicts, and tourism’s conflicts over land and resources. Linkages between disaster and conflict include disasters as triggers or intensifiers of civil conflict, disaster diplomacy and conflict resolution, disaster capitalism, and gender-based violence and intra-household conflict in the wake of disasters. These are some of the conversations that organise this volume, and this introductory chapter ends with a summary of the chapters that follow.

Keywords: Conflict; disaster; hazard; nexus; peace; recovery; tourism

INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING TOURISM, DISASTER AND CONFLICT

Tourism has arguably become one of the most important economic sectors globally. According to the World Tourism Organization, the tourism sector in 2016 accounted for about 10 per cent of the global gross domestic product (GDP), seven per cent of world trade and one in 10 jobs worldwide (UNWTO, 2017). Although tourism has been described as a resilient sector with sustained global growth rates over the last 60 years, it is also susceptible to crises and shocks that can be a result of natural hazards and manmade disasters as well as wars and other forms of armed conflict (Becken & Carmignani, 2016; Ritchie, 2008; Sönmez, Apostolopoulos, & Tarlow, 1999). It has been argued that tourists are particularly vulnerable to disasters and conflicts because they travel in unfamiliar environments, face language barriers and are difficult to account for, as they have insufficient connectedness with local communities and information channels (Becken & Hughey, 2013). Tourism crises triggered by disasters and conflicts can also have significant spillover effects into other sectors, such as agriculture, fisheries, handicraft manufacturing and the transportation sector. Despite the susceptibility of the tourism sector to external shocks, there is relatively little academic scholarship on the nexus between tourism, disaster and conflict.

Tourism is often depicted as an innocuous and intrinsically benign activity that provides huge benefits to host countries and communities in the form of employment, foreign currency, preservation of natural and cultural heritage, and intercultural exchange. The World Tourism Organization asserts that tourism contributes to several sustainable development goals (SDGs), agreed upon by United Nations Member States in 2015, including responsible production and consumption (SDG 12), life below water (SDG 14) and peace, security and strong institutions (SDG 16) (UNWTO, 2017). The sector has even been dubbed as the world’s ‘peace industry’ (D’Amore, 2009; World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), 2016).

This idealised view of tourism glosses over the fact that the sector – particularly, but not exclusively in its most common form of mass tourism – has also contributed to dispossession and displacement of indigenous communities and ethnic minorities, environmental pollution, conflicts over the use of natural resources, as well as political and socioeconomic inequality in many host countries, particularly in the so-called ‘developing world’ (e.g. Farmaki, 2017; Gurtner, 2016). Some scholars have traced back tourism practices to colonialism and imperialism, while others looked at tourism’s controversial entanglements with class, race and even war and militarism (Lisle, 2016; Weaver, 2011). Only very recently, tourism scholars have started to acknowledge the fact that tourism can also be used as a strategy to incentivise citizens’ behaviour, influence their preferences and render them more governable (Lisle, 2016; Walters, 2010).

For much of the twentieth century, the field of tourism studies has been characterised by predominantly positivist, reductionist and apolitical approaches. The lack of substantial theoretical underpinnings to tourism research has also been criticised (e.g. Hall, 2000). Farrell and Twining-Ward (2004, p. 277) have called for a reconceptualisation of tourism studies, identifying as the central problem that

tourism researchers schooled in a tradition of linear, specialized, predictable, deterministic, cause-and-effect science, are working in an area of study that is largely nonlinear, integrative, generally unpredictable, qualitative, and characterized by causes giving rise to multiple outcomes […].

In a similar vein, Faulkner and Russell (2001, p. 329) state,

tourism researchers have traditionally focused on aspects of tourism behaviour and tourism development patterns that exhibit order, linearity and equilibrium, while eschewing situations where disorder, non-linearity and disequilibrium are more apparent.

While Farrell and Twining’s argument is grounded in a philosophy of science perspective, Russell and Faulkner (1999) argue from a more conceptual and methodological viewpoint, pointing to ‘large gaps in the understanding of turbulent phases in tourism development and the underlying dynamics of change’ (p. 414). They encourage their peers to embrace chaos and complexity perspectives to provide a better understanding of disasters, crises and change.

Both calls are of relevance for studies within the tourism–disaster–conflict nexus. While recent years have seen a resurgence of studies on the interface between tourism and conflict from various disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, tourism studies have paid very little attention to the linkages between tourism and disaster (Cohen, 2011). Prior to turning to the various intersections within the nexus, we briefly discuss some of the definitions und different understandings of its three key components.

Tourism is a complex, multilayered and somewhat amorphous human phenomenon, being regarded as an industry sector by some and a composite of organisations by others (Ritchie, 2009). It is also an industry that has deep social, cultural and political implications. For an individual to be considered a ‘tourist’, at least one overnight stay at a site is usually required (Weaver & Oppermann, 2000). International travellers are generally considered ‘tourists’ as long as they do not stay in the destination country for more than 12 months. Most classifications of tourists based on motivations and visiting purpose do not only include leisure travellers, but also business travellers, medical tourists and student travellers (Ritchie, 2009). A more recent category is ‘voluntourists’ who combine leisure or adventure travel with volunteering for a humanitarian cause, such as providing ‘assistance’ following a major disaster.

‘Disaster’ has become a ubiquitous term in our everyday language. We would speak about a ‘disaster’ when our local football team loses the cup final and refer to ‘fashion disasters’ on the red carpet of film festivals. The visit of the US president Donald Trump to disaster-stricken Puerto Rico in October 2017 was deemed a ‘political disaster’ (The Atlantic, 3 October 2017) when he told Puerto Ricans that they could be very proud that they had not endured a ‘real catastrophe’ like Hurricane Katrina that hit the US Gulf Coast in 2005. A few days after his controversial visit, he tweeted that Puerto Rico’s ‘[e]lectric and all infrastructure was [a] disaster’ even before Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the island nation (The Independent, 12 October 2017).

The academic literature on ‘natural’ and human-made disasters does not agree on a common definition or classification of disasters. Carter (1991, p. xxiii) defines a disaster as ‘an event, natural or man-made, sudden or progressive, which impacts with such severity that the affected community has to respond by taking exceptional measures’. Prideaux, Laws, & Faulkner (2003, p. 478) define disasters as ‘unpredictable catastrophic change that can normally only be responded to after the event, either by deploying contingency plans already in place or through reactive response’. While Prideaux et al.’s definition seems to be confined to rapid-onset disasters, Carter’s definition encompasses both rapid-onset (‘sudden’) disasters (e.g. earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, landslides) and slow-onset (‘progressive’) disasters, such as droughts and sea-level rise.

Bhati, Upadhayaya, and Sharma (2016) classify disasters into five major categories: (1) political events, (2) natural disasters, (3) epidemics, (4) financial events and (5) manmade disasters, yet there seem to be considerable overlaps in this categorisation between manmade disasters on the one hand and political and financial events on the other, as the latter two are arguably manmade too. Faulkner’s (2001, p. 136) distinction between a ‘crisis’ and a ‘disaster’ is also somewhat problematic, as he describes the former as an event that is primarily self-inflicted and the latter as a situation where a business entity or a geographically delineated area ‘is confronted with sudden unpredictable catastrophic changes over which it has little control’. Yet, more recently, it has been argued that natural hazards turn into a catastrophic event because of a lack of preparedness or inept management, as exemplified by 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico where levees were insufficient to protect New Orleans from flooding, and the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami which caused an enormous loss of human life, destroyed infrastructure on a massive scale and triggered a long-term nuclear crisis. Most pandemics (e.g. SARS and avian flu) or regional epidemics, such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, are characterised both by a natural hazard and human failure or incapacity to contain its catastrophic impacts. Hence, the boundaries between natural and manmade (i.e. self-inflicted) disasters or crises are fuzzy at best. There is an increasing agreement among scholars that there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster and that most disasters/crises result from a combination of a hazard – natural or manmade – and a vulnerable human population (Walch, 2014; Wisner, Blaikie, Cannon, & Davis, 2004).

There have been attempts to develop quantitative measures and arbitrary statistical thresholds to define disasters (Faulkner, 2001). The Emergency Events Database that has served as data source for a number of quantitative longitudinal studies applies the following criteria for a natural disaster: (1) at least 10 people have been killed; (2) 100 or more people have reportedly been affected; (3) a state of emergency has been declared; (4) a call for international assistance has been ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Chapter 1: Conceptualising the Tourism–Disaster–Conflict Nexus
• Chapter 2: Tourism in Bali at the Interface of Resource Conflicts, Water Crisis and Security Threats
• Chapter 3: Geopolitical Ecologies of Tourism and the Transboundary Haze Disaster in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar
• Chapter 4: Community-Based Tourism in Post-Disaster Contexts: Recovery from 2016 Cyclone Winston in Fiji
• Chapter 5: Tourism Business Response to Multiple Natural and Human-Induced Stressors in Nepal
• Chapter 6: A Tale of Two Museums in Post-Tsunami and Post-Conflict Aceh, Indonesia
• Chapter 7: The Branding of Post-Conflict Tourism Destinations: Theoretical Reflections and Case Studies
• Chapter 8: Tsunami, Tourism and Threats to Local Livelihoods: The Case of Indigenous Sea Nomads in Southern Thailand
• Index