This handbook presents a timely, broad-ranging, and provocative overview
of the essential nature of ecotourism. The chapters will both advance
the existing central themes of ecotourism and provide challenging and
divergent observations that will thrust ecotourism into new areas of
research, policy, and practice.
The volume is arranged around four key themes: sustainability, ethics
and identity, change, conflict, and consumption, and environment and
learning, with a total of 28 chapters. The first section focuses on
sustainability as a core ecotourism criterion, with a primary focus on
some of the macro sustainability issues that have an impact on
ecotourism. Foremost among these topics is the linkage to the UN's
Sustainable Development Goals, which have relevance to ecotourism as one
of the greenest or most responsible forms of tourism. The chapters in
the second section provide a range of different topics that pull
ecotourism research into new directions, including a chapter on
enriching indigenous ecotourism through culturally sensitive
universalism. The third section includes chapters on topics ranging from
persons with disabilities as a neglected body of research in ecotourism,
to ecotourism as a form of luxury consumption. The final section
emphasises the link between ecotourism and learning about the natural
world, including a deeply theoretical chapter on rewilding Europe. With
contributions from authors around the world, this handbook gives a
global platform to local voices, in both developed and emerging country
contexts.
The multidisciplinary and international Routledge Handbook of
Ecotourism will be of great interest to researchers, students, and
practitioners working in tourism and sustainability.
