Towards Sustainable Tourism: Pros and Cons of Geotourism

Dear Colleagues,

The recent coronavirus pandemic and the related lockdown procedures instituted by many governments have proven that most people do not like being isolated in one place. There is a fundamental and deep-seated desire of people not only to be out and about in their local area, but beyond that, to visit different places, see different things and have different experiences. This is what has been called the “First Law of Tourism”, which is that tourism is driven by the diversity of places and cultures, whether regionally, nationally or internationally, and the desire of people to experience these. Several types of niche tourism have developed in recent years, such as ‘heritage tourism’ or ‘island tourism’, but another, developed since the 1980s, has been ‘ecotourism’. In contrast to mass tourism, this is tourism based on wildlife, its conservation and the local communities involved. It has been hugely successful in demonstrating to participants how important it is to achieve sustainability by promoting wildlife tourism while minimising its negative impacts.
Geotourism is a more recently identified type of niche tourism, though it has been taking place for much longer than its formal naming. It is a type of nature tourism based not on living nature, but on local geology, landforms or landscapes, whether in rural areas or in towns and cities where geological materials such as building stones may have been used. The Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal in India are famous examples of stone constructions. Many of the most spectacular and well-visited natural places in the world are based on geology or geomorphological landscapes, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Niagara Falls in the USA. In fact, places such as these have been so-well visited that E L R Hunt famously commented as long ago as 1988 that in the USA, there was a danger of people “loving their national parks and historic sites to death”. This illustrates the ever-present potential for geotourists to damage what they have come to see and highlights the need for sustainable tourism. Some geological sites are particularly sensitive and vulnerable to tourist pressures, e.g., cave speleothems, sand dunes and mountain environments.
As Ross Dowling and David Newsome have described, geotourism has become much more inclusive of social and cultural elements of the environment. This is a theme that has been pioneered by the geopark movement over the last 20 years and has developed into a network of Global Geoparks formally recognised by UNESCO. Geopark aims are geoheritage conservation, geological education for the wider public and sustainable economic development, mainly through promoting geotourism. They are based on the principles of sustainable geotourism and local community involvement. The geopark movement is one that recognises that many parts of the world are economically poor but geologically rich.
This Special Issue of Sustainability will focus on these and other issues involved in sustainable geotourism, particularly involving the positive and negative impacts on sites and local areas and discussing the management of geotourists as well as geosites. Both conceptual and case-based papers are welcome. Examples of contents include but are not limited to:

• Positive and/or negative impacts of geotourism;
• Quantitative economic assessments of the benefits of geotourism;
• Sustainable geotourism in geoparks;
• Geotourism facilities and activities;
• Geotourism in sensitive geological environments.

Dr. Murray Gray
Guest Editor

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• sustainable geotourism
• geoparks
• geoconservation
• geoeducation