In The economy and ecology of heathlands
Fundamental
conceptual terms, such as ‘culture’, ‘nature’ and ‘landscape’, are far from
being neutral scientific objects. They are academic constructions which need to
be understood as they emerge across their historic contexts. The landscape
concept encompasses a collective sensitive and symbolic cultural subjectivity
from the higher classes, engaged in an aesthetical contemplation. It’s different
from the perception of the peasants,
which occupy and transform the land as part of their daily struggle.
To
achieve the “Good use of Nature” we need to apply a new ethical perspective to
the economic and financial world, and to the political categories. The
Environmental philosophy allowed the construction of a new ontology as a
critique of anthropocentrism, a new epistemology as a critique of
ethnocentrism, and a new ethical theory, with a universal value and practical
content applicable to all the social fields. Consequently, the new Common
Agricultural Policy must recognize the need to strengthen the environmental and
landscape issues by supporting the management of "land". The CAP must
lead to recognizing the irreducible diversity and intrinsic values of different
cultural landscapes from the North to the South of Europe.
“Terroir” and cultural Landscape
Augustin Berque (1993), has developed philosophical
theories about European and Japanese human societies, space/landscape/nature,
and established a unique academic concept, Écoumène. Furthermore he also introduced a new concept called trajection, which
means the interactive relationship between culture and nature, the collective
and the individual, and the subjectivity and the objectivity in actual
societies in Europe and in Japan. The landscape concept, born in 4th century
China and in the centuries of the Western Renaissance, encompasses a collective
sensitive and symbolic cultural subjectivity from the higher classes, engaged
in an aesthetical contemplation and different from the perception of the peasants,
which occupy and transform the land as part of their daily struggle. (Filosofia da Paisagem, 2012)
Arnold Berleant's (2004) approach to environmental
aesthetics considers the human being as an active contributor in a context
where it is a continuous participant, distancing himself from the Kantian
perspective of a contemplative subject and a contemplative object. A person is
the perceptual centre, both as an individual and as a member of a
socio-cultural group, of his or her life-world, whose horizons are shaped by
geographical and cultural factors.( Filosofia da Paisagem, 2012)
In their
aesthetical perspective, the concept of landscape cannot be reduced to a visual
direction and includes several dimensions: admiring
the landscape embraces the tactile appeal, the kinaesthetic pleasure, the
natural songs, the taste... These rich dimensions cannot be forsaken when
travelling in the landscapeand are relevant to cultural
tourism and nature tourism. “The concept
of landscape has had to be stretched in many directions: from an object to an
area, from a visual experience to a multi-sensory one, from natural scenery to
the whole range of human-made transformations of nature. This expansion of the
idea of landscape is further complicated by the fact that landscapes are never
stationary but are constantly in transition.” (Berleant, 2011)
Re-thinking landscape means that
every landscape is a human artefact: the historical human presence
brings value to the landscape, not only the positive categories of the
beauty experiences in nature but also the negative sublime, to recognize
“if such practices also offend our
sensibility; that is, they have aesthetic as well as moral consequences”.
(Berleant, 2011). It isn’t the end of nature or the end of wilderness! The
geodiversity and biodiversity of the land- the cultural landscape - are dynamic
and dialectic; the natural process of recycling and metamorphosis remains universal
in the urban land; tectonics submerge old purple continents into the large
oceans; cultural landscapes turn into heathlands, and imperial cities fall down
into ruins, the frozen lands retreat to the great North, primitive
Mediterranean forests return after the fire…
“A
land ethic then reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in
turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the
land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our
effort to understand and preserve the capacity.” (Leopold, 1947: 258).
We cannot talk about the
“irrationalism” of environmental ethics (Ferry, 1992), but in reality, we
should talk about an environmental reason.
The environmental reason
If the object of science is to
explain the world machinery, then scientific laws are amoral, and the answer to
the categorical imperative of "how
to live in the world” belongs to the domain of philosophy and of ethics (1677/1988,
Espinosa). It’s in this sense that the environmental ethics inquiries the value
of science and of social development, not only in an anthropocentric dimension,
but also according to and beyond modern science: Life before Man and Earth
before Life.
In the context of the world
environmental conferences in the twentieth century, we can follow the
continuity of this parallel. When the critique of philosophy queries our
civilization mode. And when each new fundamental scientific discovery supports
the establishment of new principles of environmental philosophy and postulates
the construction of a new environmental ethics, with practical value. Nowadays,
each scientific discovery is supported by multidisciplinary and
interdisciplinary science paradigm and and evaluated by several environmental ethics.
In
the first environmental conference, held in Stockholm in 1972, the principle of
common home emerged: “… the man has
two homelands, his own and planet Earth”; founding a new international
order (ethics and political order) with
the principle of planetary Community and planetary solidarity, as well
with the principle of planetary defense
of life before the prevalence of the humanism. (UNCHE 1972)In the second part of the report conference, devoted to the drafting of
a new scientific view on the drive, unpredictability, continuity and
interdependence of the cosmos, the concept of 'plasma' is introduced, to understand the reality, which then
allows to understand the origin of the universe and the transformation
conditions on Earth to generate and conserve life: water that cooled down the
temperature of the planet and shaped its crust; organic carbon compounds,
sources of life; the atmosphere of oxygen and ozone, protectors of life;
photosynthesis, base of the cycles of carbon and oxygen; the creation of the biosphere
and the Cambrian explosion of life in the complex, vulnerable and unpredictable
process of adaptation and natural selection, that generated always, up to our
time, an increasing biodiversity and natural diversity, in unstable
equilibrium.
Scientific discoveries only allow us
to be sure that the balance of ecosystems favourable to life depends on a
multitude of physical, biological and geological factors and recognize that the
higher the position occupied by organisms in the food chain, the more vulnerable
they will be, as well as some species, whose destruction would dramatically
affect the entire system.
What today is dramatic, is the rhythm
at which biodiversity is being lost, the destruction of natural resources,
energy and the multiplication of polluting effects that reach not only the
whole lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the atmosphere and the
biosphere, but also, with unpredictable consequences, the fundamental genetic
material, the DNA, which conserves and reproduces the codes of life.
If we consider the emergence of our
ancestors of the human species from 4 to 5 million years ago, inside the
framework of the biological time, which is immense, nothing can assure that, as
happened to the dinosaurs in the past (sixty-five million years ago), the
kingdom of mammals won't come to an end one day and other forms of more adapted
life will continue to perpetuate the music of life in the sidereal spaces.
However, the extinction of Homo
sapiens sapiens and species associated with our evolution, a world of
plants, microbes and insects, would unlikely give rise again to the human
species or even to mammals.
In this perspective, nobody can
imagine today what will be the link in the chain of life where the evolutionary
leap will occur, as nobody dreamt before that the grandfather of our human
condition was an insignificant rodent that survived the widespread extinction
of dominant species at the end of the Mesozoic Era (67 million years ago). But,
at the same time, the preservation of the human being returns to the centre of
environmental ethics.
To
be coherent, we must consider that the multiple links between all forms of life
(and even those within the non-biotic environment), require, in addition to the
duty of preserving our species, a duty of conserving the diversity of beings
and their environmental niches, since everything depends on their dynamic
equilibrium, as in the Aldo Leopold (1947) biotic pyramid. And in light of
contemporary science, that’s means the prevalence of the principle of preservation
of Life before Man and the conservation of the Earth with all its biodiversity.
As
such scientific laws are amoral as stated before. Morality, on the other hand,
is a cultural expression determined by social dominance and historical context,
who gives them a sectary character, and not a universal one. We need, however,
a moral theory that can be universal, trans-temporal and available to lighten human
individual conduct, science development and all political ideologies, without
considering the man in the zenith of Life. Life, with
its biodiversity, is at the top of the complex cosmos evolution but we don’t
know if our species, born on Earth, is the end of this cosmos evolution. To get
an answer to this question, a new ethical perspective was created, a theory built
upon the meta-ethical principles and applicable to all human activities,
including tourism activities.
The "environmentalist reason" formulates a new categorical
imperative for human action, beyond the Kant maximum of forming individual
ethics of acts with the principle of a universal law, a new ethical framework,
which stems from the need to configure the human conduct within the limits that
safeguard the continuity of life and its diversity (Jonas, 1984).
From the conservationist Nature
paradigm to the concept of environment
The acknowledgment of the economic
value of using biodiversity is still a way to refuse the autonomous land ethic
values. “The land-relation is still
strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.“ (Leopold,
1947).
This usually leads to confining
nature conservation to parks and reserves, to the species potentially useful to
humans and to the action of the State, giving complete freedom to private
enterprise. This comes from the scientifically false premise that the elements
with economic value of the biotope can exist in nature without the presence of
other elements. Let´s hear what scientist say:
“Plants
absorb energy from the sun. This energy flows through a circuit called the
biota, which may be represented by a pyramid consisting of layers[…]
Soils
depleted of their storage or the organic substance which anchors it, wash away
faster than they form. This is erosion[…]
Water,
like soil, is a part of the energy circuit. Industry, by polluting water or
obstructing it with dams, may exclude the plants and animals necessary to keep
energy in circulation…”
“Conservation
is a state of harmony between men and land…”
“The
image commonly employed in conservation education is «the balance of
nature»...this figure of speech fails to describe accurately what little we
know about the land mechanism. A much true image is the one employed in
ecology: the biotic pyramid.“
This is the scientific base of
ecological consciousness - to recognize the “duties towards nature”.
The feeling of needing help and
support, developed throughout the process of natural selection, spawned the
concept of the Community, basis of the ethics. But a new conception of nature
emerges, now understood as a society of plants, animals, minerals, fluids and
gases, closely linked and interdependent.
“The
(usual) land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not
obligations.” “All ethics are based
on a premise: that the individual is a member of an interdependent community …The
land ethics simply enlarge the boundaries of the community to include soils,
water, plants, and animals, or, collectively: the land.“ (Leopold, 1947)
Biocentrism (Earth first!,
Greenpeace, Wilderness Society, ...) assigns an intrinsic value to any living
entity and Aldo Leopold’s Ecocentrism focuses on our duty towards the biotic
community, which we are part of
(Larrère, 2007). This isn’t about applying
pre-existing moral theories to new objects, such as nature. Nature shall be
included in our field of moral reflection, our duties, which were previously
limited to human beings, will now be extended to other natural beings - the
concept of an enlarged community of natural beings.
Tourism economy: the changing
of the paradigm
Mass tourism versus ecotourism, the
controversy
The debate among ecotourism and its
critics (Butcher, 2011), has initially been focused on opposing mass tourism to
ecotourism, identifying a small niche of customers, with limited financial size
and market needs. On the side of the masses and large scale development, they
give the Spanish example of Torremolinos, a poor fishing community transformed
into a prosperous resort and the impact of tourism revenues from the 1960s in
Spain’s economic modernization, for instance. Ecotourism’s philosophy is
accused of being “…anti-modern, and
likely to take sides against any desire for substantial development, even in
economically poor societies.” (Butcher, 2011). The same author advocates
ethical tourism with the adjectives small, local and participatory and mostly
associated with sustainability. And concludes: “This serves to accentuate the limiting philosophy of “small is
beautiful” and denies the many benefits of large scale development”
(Butcher, 2011). That is the economic dimension of the controversy. Another
argument, in moral and political dimensions, is the choice that local people must
have, not per se for the artisan and natural side, but to choose freely new
productive technologies, infrastructures, jobs and commodities…
Nowadays this opposition has
lost real sense, due to the new tourist paradigm emerging in the international
market and the crises of the ’Sun and Sea’ model.
The democratization and socialization
of education and culture, as well as the evolution of big markets around the
world solved some of the opposing issues: Cultural Tourism has become a mass
tourism, such as Nature Tourism, in America, Europe and Asia. This new reality
becomes clear when researching the motivations for leisure travelling is
completed with the research of the real activities carried out by tourists.
Spanish tourism data gives a complete statistical evaluation about tourist
activities, which clearly explains this evolution.
Cultural activities occupy more than
half of the total of international tourists in Spain. This new phenomenon has a
great social and economic importance. Consulting the statistical data about cultural tourism reveal that they
represent 55% (30.665 from 55.762 thousand) of all international tourists
activities and those tourists correspond to 60% of tourism rent; they stayed
about 10,3 days, a number that exceeds the national average; frequent returns,
79,6% and more than 10 times 30,5%. (Source: IET 2011). The dominance of
cultural tourism has a parallel with the fall down of traditional activities at
the beach.
The French Louvre can be
considered a great cosmological observatory of tourists and their metamorphosis
market: Firstly, the growth of visitants, from 8,413 to 8,888 million
(2010-2011). Secondly, in their origin: France (33%), USA (16%), Brazil (7%),
Australia (7%), Italy (6%), China (6%), Spain (5%), Germany (5%), UK (4%) and
Russia (4%). And finally in the age: <18 years old (19%), 18-25 (20%), 26-30
(11%), 31-45 ( 22%), 46-59 (16%) and >60 years old (12%).
The rise of a new middle class
from Brazil, China and Russia is clear. India will come very soon. The
prejudges about the uncultured young people vanished face the reality.
The increasing offer in museums in
various countries and the development of the museum concept can also help to
explain this change in the demand of the middle class: “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of
society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves,
researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of
humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and
enjoyment.” (ICOM Statutes 2007)
The above definition of a museum
shall be applied without any limitation arising from the nature of the
governing body, the territorial character, the functional structure or the
orientation of the collections of the institution concerned. The scientific and
technical revolution creates a dynamic of innovation in this sector with the
development of the museums and science centres of 2nd and 3rd generation,
designed for a participative and interactive audience. The new museums and the
use of modern technologies of restoration, conservation, information and
communication, allowed to reduce the negative impacts of mass tourism.
There are no clear and accurate
statistics concerning ecotourism, but we can establish their relevance, for
example, by taking into consideration the number of visitors of national parks,
which represent only a fraction of the tourists who seek all the parks,
reserves and the cultural landscapes of Spain: 10,618,284, in 2007!
In the 2009 Ecotourism and
Sustainable Tourism Conference, sponsored by the International Ecotourism
Society, most of the discussions at the conference focused on how to define
environmental tourism practices and how to create appropriate guidelines and
implementation strategies, especially when the practices are motivated by the
interests of tourists and tourism operators from outside those communities. In
this context, Whyte (2010) argued “…that
a norm of direct participation belongs in this framework along with fair
compensation and participative justice. Tourism practices the tourists and
operators of which do not make any good faith efforts to fulfil direct
participation are morally suspicious. We also have at least two good reasons to
invoke direct participation, namely that violations of the norm can be harmful
and that our environmental identities and heritages are at stake when
environmental tourism practices come to our communities. We should also be
aware that tourism practices that respect fair compensation and participative
justice but not direct participation may be allowed, but they are at best
examples of mutually advantageous exploitation.”
The challenge is how to see a new
mass tourism in an ethical perspective: cultural tourism and nature tourism. We
need to reach a consensus about these concepts: Cultural tourism (tourism with
the cultural structures, namely museums and monuments); Natural tourism (in
nature - wilderness and mixed wilderness/cultural landscapes) and distinguishing
them from Rural Tourism (in the humanized landscape, landscape in the sense of
the Greek oikoumenê gê, the French terroir, the “cultural
landscape”). I propose two conceptual criterions: differentiation by their
specific structures and distinctive touristic products.
A new educated and cultured middle
class that is changing social taste
The modern social taste of the middle
class includes a new global concept about Art and Aesthetics. New moral and ethical
values face nature, heritage, environment and landscape, by influence of the
Environmental Philosophy in every scientific domain and development process.
The economic paradigm of traditional
tourism and the ecotourism model, based in the “tourism industry” concept, can
ignore this revolution.
The weight of this middle class and
its instruction and cultural level, in parallel with the emancipation of the
working woman, a contemporary youth increasingly educated and the anticipation
of an active retirement in segments of the middle class, generated a change in
the social weight of this class and in the categories of "taste" and
travelling “motivation”.
Returning to what was until 2008 the
second market in the world, we find 87.8% of international tourists in Spain
with a level of income classified among the middle class and upper middle
class, 46.5%, female tourists, 50.7% of tourists with higher studies and 42.3%
older than 45 years.
Why can the “tourism industry” ignore
the moral issues? Firstly, for economic and pragmatic reasons: The prosperity
of a region-destination must be based on rising the target audience of
middle-middle class and upper middle class, considering their economic
relevance and social influence capacity, as well as its role as a "social
consumption model ". Their young people are spreading the new paradigms of
cultural tourism and nature tourism in society. And their teachers are the
first vehicle for information, training their social taste, and the most important
“informal tourism agents", when they promote and organize the school
trips, every year.
Rehabilitation of the heritage and
the conservation of nature and cultural objects has become an important issue
for business tourism. It helps strengthen their traditional chains of value,
taking into account the new motivations and preferences of the middle class,
who are now interested in what cultural tourism and tourism of nature have to
offer. Thus, the ecological assessment of the economy becomes an imperative of
the tourism economy imposed by their evolution to a paradigm that includes
preferential consumption of products from the cultural tourism and tourism of
nature. If not, the traditional tourist destinations risk losing gradually the
middle class public and turning to a downward curves (Butler, 1980). But
through this we can also anticipate the renewal cycle of the tourist
destinations.
Finally, the relevance of moral
issues in Tourism is supported by the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism (1999),
which represent an epochal cultural representation. There is probably a
revolution underway, changing the “motivations” and “preferences” of the middle
class, on an international scale, generating vast changes in the tourist
market, leading to the coexistence of various paradigms, with the clear rise of
cultural tourism and natural tourism.
From the resource to the product
The concept of tourist industry has
led to search for local resources - biological and geological, livestock and
forestry, etc. as their basic material. In fact the first are used and
processed by other industries, and in many cases require its conservation. And
as for the second, its consumption is shared between residents and travellers.
What constitutes a tourist resource
is a humanized cultural landscape. Reading and interpretation of the cultural
landscape is the basis for the creation of the tourist product and its first
metamorphosis of value. It’s the ecology of the landscape (material heritage)
and its metaphysics (immaterial heritage), which constitute the essence of
tourist resource, but only when their interpretation and reading gives it a new
increase in cultural and economic value. The landscape is not an open book,
intelligible empirically. The transformation into a tourist product goes through
its readability, which gives it a used value; it’s a metamorphosis that
generates economy value, and it’s also a process of cultural literacy, mediated
by the construction of a language for tourist communication; the result of this
process changes the shape and the essence of traditional concepts of resources
and tourist products.
The Natural history, served by the
Earth Sciences, Geology and Geomorphology in particular, reveals the diversity
of geological heritage and its natural monuments. Galopim de Carvalho (1998)
proposes the classification of three types of Geo monuments: Outcrops, sites
and landscapes, increasing physical dimension.
Life sciences, especially biology and
botany, teach us the size and value of biodiversity, and also the value of new biotopes
created by the humanization of the landscape.
Social History in its archaeological
and artistic valences, and ethnography, allow us to take advantage of the built
heritage, works of art and literature, as well as ethnographic objects.
And when we discuss these, we can’t
forget their immaterial dimension, which can be found in the erudite and
popular imagination and in their creative expressions in literature, dance,
philosophy, music ... The expansion of the human species by all regions of the
globe and its adaptation to the diversity of habitats in the modern age has
spawned a new relationship between humanity and nature: it ceased to exist as
pure natural countryside and the whole landscape has become what it is by
direct or indirect influence of human activity, producing either unspeakable
destruction or new cultural landscapes.
Restructuring tourism for more
competitiveness and productivity (and sustainability)
Offers in Cultural Landscapes -
Circuits and Route products
The growth of competitiveness in the
tourism economy will be sought particularly through the ability to integrate
Circuits and Routes in all patrimonies, which gradually will link the current
urban attraction poles to dynamic regional visits, inter-regional and even
cross-border. With these Routes and Circuits we can promote the upgrading of
the economic status of excursionist to the status of tourist, increasing the
time spent in certain places and the desire or need to return to them. This
will help surpass the seasonality and promote a quality consumption, which will
increase productivity.
The Routes and Circuits will be
integrated in their destinations. These destinations will generate the main
profit, but they will not be the structures that organise these Routes and
Circuits (the museums, monuments and parks) to collect the greatest profit; the
profit from tourism will come from the aforementioned external Chains of Value (Accommodation
for visitors, restaurants, transports and so one). The misunderstanding of this
economic paradox is the cause of the historical conflict between tourism and
development, but is also at the same time the key to overcome it. This is
important particularly in our time, in which a new paradigm of tourism is
emerging - environmental tourism, which means cultural tourism, nature tourism,
and rural tourism, with their specific products and renewed environmental
sustainability requirements, for all other tourist products. (Queirós, 2009)
Nowadays, ecology and landscape
aesthetics depend even more from the labour of farmers and peasants, if we
aspire to a full conservation of the landscape ecology and its aesthetic; with
more and more people leaving the countryside, innumerable biotopes, which are
the result from the interaction of human action with the original biodiversity,
will be lost. With its ruin and emigration, the risk of it disappearing from
many cultural landscapes can become a reality.
On another plan, we must stop the
destruction process of the heritage of historical urban centres. This is why
the rehabilitation of heritage and the conservation of nature and cultural
objects has become a vital issue for business tourism and for the reinforcement
of its traditional value chains.
See below how the existence of an
environmental heritage recognized by the contribution of the different sciences
leads us to the concept of “landscape ecology” and, simultaneously, the
recognition of another intangible heritage translates into “metaphysics of
landscape”, two concepts that are extremely important to define the Nature
Tourism and Cultural Tourism and to organize the products they have to offer in
Circuits and Routes.
This new vision of the landscape,
multi and interdisciplinary, which is at the same time an instrument operating
its hermeneutics and a category in the field of Philosophy of Nature, is named:
-
Landscape ecology. In our definition it represents a structural and
systemic view that encompasses the large natural landscape, characterized
and differentiated not only by the various fields of science (environmental
sciences and exact sciences), but also but also social sciences because it was created with
the help of Man in his daily effort as a farmer, a shepherd and a landscape
architect. (Queirós,
2003)
But the interpretation of the
landscape, from the perspective of the philosophy of nature and the environment
philosophy, would be incomplete without the use of another category of
elements, which we define as:
-
Metaphysics of landscape. It represents the domain of the
"spirituality", "soul" of things, the categories of
aesthetic emotions and feelings, "beauty" and "beautiful",
the "sublime", "wonderful" and "mysterious", “monumental”,
"epic" and "tragic." (Queirós, 2003)
Including the negative categories:
the disgusting, the ugly, the repulsive,
the abhorrent...
The concepts of Tourist Circuits and
Routes are based on the need to use a scientific methodology, based on an inter-
and multi-discipline, to interpret and organise the visit to the territory,
which allows the tourists to read and interpret their cultural landscapes.
The first key of this reading and
interpretation landscape is the Natural history, Earth Sciences, geology and
geomorphology. The second key is the Life sciences, revealing the splendour of
biodiversity. And the third key is social and artistic History, associated to
Ethnography and Anthropology. But Geography is probably the science, in their
scientific work methodology, closer to tourism studies. (Queirós, 2008)
With this scientific perspective, the
essence of the methodology of scientific work in tourist information and
guidelines consists in 'describing and interpreting' the Earth and the Human
Beings who live in their midst, but by different ways given accessibility to different audience segments, and by this red line pass the frontier
from Geography object study and the tourism research, including the making of
their products.
This conception lead to a philosophy
born in the observation and reading of the landscape and from the synthesis of
Earth and Human Being that dwells and transforms the 'cultural landscape', but
at the same time threatening to degrade or destroy. That contradiction
justifies the need for an ethics of tourism,
built from the new Environmental Ethics and based on the critic of
anthropocentrism and ethnocentrism.
We define “tourist Circuit as a road
integrating all heritage products, short-lived (should not exceed one
day/night), accessible to all audiences but segmented in an autonomous and
distinctive identity, organized in the context of discovery and enjoyment of
the landscape ecology (in the sense of interdisciplinary contribution to
reading the landscape) and the metaphysics of landscape (immaterial heritage,
imaginary erudite and popular), and using the communication/emotional principle
of "montage of attractions", created to sustain and develop value
chains of tourist activity.”(Queirós, 2009)
We define “tourist Route as an organized set of Circuits to discover and enjoy all
heritages, with a unique identity, based on ecology and landscape metaphysics,
accessible to all audiences but with different products according their
segments, organized to serve the development of tourist activity and their
value chains.” (Queirós, 2009)
Although there are common elements
among the Circuits (for example, churches of the same era, gourmet dishes, the
same flora) the mixture of their heritage should produce a single offer and
identity. And it is in this matter that the activity of tourism differs from
other scientific fields, because selection and value are determined
by the differentiation of the tourism products, not from scientific
criteria values.
This new concept is built upon the
conceptual contributions of geography, selective observation and significant
description of the cultural landscape - its historical, natural, ethnographic
heritage; the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of the environment,
“ecology and metaphysics of landscape"; communication sciences, involving
the psychology of feels and the cinema (the montage of attractions is a concept
from Eisenstein); economy, “value chains”. And its methodological
construction consists in recycle traditionally concepts used in another
scientific fields and reprocess them to a new subject of study
What are cultural tourism and nature
tourism? Organization and products
We propose the following definition: An organic and productive branch of tourism
incorporating levels of design, organization and promotion, contents and
materials from the domain of culture and scientific culture, particularly in
the essence of cultural tourism, Museum and Heritage Sciences. (Queirós, 2009)
And in the core of the Nature Tourism,
you can find other contents and materials from Environmental Sciences. However,
when adjusted to the dynamics and the objectives of the tourism economy, in the
framework of the management of their value chains, we can distinguish clearly
these concepts looking into their different organic structures and products.
Cultural Tourism only exists if it’s
present the network of museums, monuments and archaeological and historical
sites and centres, particularly those which are World Heritage, cultural
festivals and celebrations. Museums, in the largest definition of ICOM
(International Council of Museum), are the major organic structures of Cultural
Tourism.
The products offered by Cultural
Tourism, are the collections display at museums (permanent or
temporary), from the Louvre to the Prado, monuments, and archaeological and
historical sites and centres (particularly those which are Human Heritage),
festivals and celebrations with a value of identity, local matter, at regional,
national or international levels, like the Holy Week celebrations in Castilla
or the Fátima Sanctuary celebrations, in Portugal. Cultural Tourism also offers
the architectural value of patrimony structures, like the iconic Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao or the monumental complex of Alhambra in Granada, Spain.
All these organic structures of
Cultural Tourism (museums, monuments, science centres...) are operating today
as interpretation centres to their diverse audience segments (the tourists
surpass the segment of the public school) and temporary events also require an organizational
structure itself, even if assembled for a limited period, which increasingly
tends to set in partial but permanent forms of memory and event promotion. This
is the case with the creation of museums of the Holy Week in Spain or of the
apparitions in Fatima, Portugal, or in Lourdes, France, that complement the
Sanctuaries. And these temples are evolving in the complexity of products and
as a standing offer, in addition to the dates of pilgrimages.
Therefore, the concept of cultural
tourism must naturally integrate religious tourism, because that concept is
larger than the second and the religious phenomenon is one of humanity's
cultural expressions.
The idea of Cultural tourism based on
built heritage, views and lifestyle, as well as events and happenings, proposed
by Swarbrooke (2002), gives us a rough overview of the diversity of contexts
and products of cultural tourism. It should be connected to the specific
function of tourism economy and, in this context, should lead us to study how
today it constitutes and can reproduce the tourist capital, based on its
relationship with the culture industry, and most of all to recognise the
extension of the cultural penetration into the tourist activity, which may have
led to profound changes in the traditional paradigm of tourism.
The major structures of Nature
Tourism are the Parks and Natural Reserves, paleontological, and nature
interpretation Centres, and their landscape - humanized landscape (cultural
landscape or “terroir”), with a special focus on those classified as World
Heritage. The products offered by Nature Tourism or Ecological Tourism,
structured within this network in the context of cultural and natural
landscapes, offer the discovery of nature diversity, observation of species,
small and large pedestrian routes, and the pleasure of a human re-approach to
nature, with all the sensations. We include Health Tourism to the above
mentioned: Thermal and water pleasures (SPA), the French thalassotherapy
(sea station), mountain stations, wellness, the functional (healthy) food tours
and itineraries offered by Circuits. And we also include Sports in Nature as
part of Active Tourism: hiking, walking, climbing, canoeing, skiing or
motorized vehicles. These products are shared with Rural Tourism. Integrating
the health aspect with Nature Tourism becomes an obvious choice when we realise
that the network of Thermal Baths occurs in zones of geological faults and
dating back to at least the Romanization period of the Iberian Peninsula and
Europe. And even more when we adopt the current formula of the World Health
Organization (WHO) to establish its content:
The WHO defines health as "a State of complete physical, mental and
social well-being, which is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".
This approach amplifies the biological concept of health, because it includes
the psychological and social components of the human being and an ethical
dimension. The functional food and the conditions surrounding the conservation
of nature are now inextricably linked to the modern Spas, just as they already
were connected to the Baths of classical civilizations.
The products offered by Rural Tourism
include accommodation in traditional homes as well as the discovery of humanized
landscapes (cultural landscapes, the French "terroir" concept) and/or
participating in the agriculture work cycles, associated to Active Tourism:
road trips, hikes, TT, horseback riding, hunting and fishing, and Golf Tourism.
Usually this typological framework does not apply to golf, but, golf normally
implies the creation of a cultural landscape in the rural space not in urban or
virgin landscapes, which adapt traditional landscapes to new functions while
keeping the landscape setting. Golf, like tennis, will be gradually democratized
and accessible to the middle class. . Their social value, can attract a younger crowd and promote fitness and an active
ageing. The current breakdown between Golf and Rural Tourism, is the issue of
deficient integration of tourist products in the same destination.
Other activities that relay rural
tourism to Health tourism include outdoor hiking, a demand for air and water in
pollution free woods and springs, and traditional, biological and healthy food.
The joint offering of Cultural
Tourism and Nature Tourism, which may include the products of Rural Tourism,
can be called Environmental Tourism.
The lines for the democratic
and ecological reform of the CAP
The political debate about the
countryside and, in particular, about agriculture and Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP), does not exist as a fundamental issue of our urbanized European
Nations. The theme is only delivered to a few specialists or is used as a
political cartoon in electoral periods.
However,
the countryside and its forests, pastures and cultural fields, have an
important job in cleaning the air and act as a carbon sink, a new and
innovative energy market for the purchase of carbon credits by corporate
polluters. Together the Ocean is the main source of healthy food; and, at least,
the most important resource of drinking water.
The countryside is the resource base
of the new paradigm of environmental tourism, as pointed out above. Both
countryside and sea are the main environmental reserve against global warming
and a strategic asset against unemployment and the impoverishment of the
country, one of the pillars of defence, security and national sovereignty.
In this context, the defence of a
"Sustainable Revival of the Countryside" constitutes a priority issue
- even though the urban society doesn’t acknowledge it - in terms of policies
from the Government and political ethics. While the tradition of left parties belittles
the political action in fields by considering the peasants a political reserve
of the right, the tradition of the parties of the right is the progressive
abandonment of rural claims, either because their elites will began urbanising
them, either because they undervalue the ability to protest, and the autonomous
political struggle of people in rural communities.
In parallel, Churches have taken on a
growing social role, answering to the popular needs of spiritual and material
support, when the democratic State fails their duties toward the community, assuming, at all levels of the hierarchy, a critical
stance against the destruction of social rights and national sovereignty and
against an authoritarian political governance.
The current CAP economy sidesteps the
tendency for the devaluation of capital-land and agricultural production, which
is the result of a more extreme rise of financial capital speculation above all
other forms of capital.
At a political level, CAP opposes
peasants and farmers from the North countries against the producers of South
countries, across Europe as well as internationally. In social terms it puts
agricultural producers against environmentalists and active people against
retired people.
Therefore, to achieve a new CAP that
serves the interests of the sustainable development of rural areas in Europe,
as well as the resources and services that the city requires from the
countryside, it is imperative that we choose a new CAP that can solve two
fundamental questions:
a.
The issue of the monopoly of
big trade and speculative markets, which obstructs the agricultural market
balance and drains the producers.
b.
The creation of a new
international order: either a reform of the World Trade Organization, or
removal the agricultural sphere from this organization and the creation of a
structure inside the framework of the United Nations, preventing speculation
with the prices of agricultural products.
The democratic alternative; a new defence
policy and rural Renaissance
Seen from a technical-scientific
perspective, the development of rural areas and of their communities and
clusters must have a global and integrated approach: agricultural productions,
markets, asset valuation, industrialization, heritage assessment, environmental
tourism, general services in rural contexts, diverse organizations that promote
and defend economic agents, including primary producers, as well as their
activities and products. (Veloso, 1998)
It’s essential that Governments,
local authorities and economic agencies promote the support and partnerships by
mobilizing universities and research centres, as well as organizing technical
support systems, and developing marketing and export systems.
It’s essential to create development
strategies for the territories, by integrating regional marketing policies,
including their heritage, products, tourism, etc.
The ecological economy transition,
the ecological countryside transition and a new social contract towards
progress in the countryside.
In the CAP, the 1st pillar (direct payments) should concentrate on getting a minimum of financial support from the farmers' income so that the 2nd pillar (Rural Development) may support the agricultural activity as a supplier of goods and public services in their environmental and social (rural) roles. (Sequeira, 2008) Furthermore the CAP should be a tool that maximizes production, promoting employment and keeping people in rural areas and fields and must take into account national and regional specificity, the areas of marginal productivity (payment of goods and services that are not sheltered by the market), must recognize the need to strengthen the environmental and landscape issues by supporting the "land" management, including actions related to Network Natura 2000. The CAP should also aim to improve the quality of life in rural areas by promoting the diversity of economic activities and capital gains resulting from the integration of those economic activities, especially the binomials:
-
Conservation and increased
value of the cultural landscape (humanized) / environmental tourism (cultural
tourism + nature tourism_ health tourism + rural tourism +)
-
Sustainability of agriculture,
silviculture and pastoral mosaic / soil improvement, groundwater recharge,
renewable energy sources, carbon-sink
-
Public health and safety in
production / functional food (healthy)
-
Multifunctional rural areas /
conservation and valorisation of intangible and tangible heritage of bio and
geodiversity.
The CAP should promote the
competitiveness of agriculture in a context of ecological transition of its
economy, as well as association and cooperation, which leads us to:
-
specific support for the
development of scientific work of applied research,
-
the integrated development of
nature tourism_ health tourism, cultural tourism, and rural tourism,
-
the development of new forms
of association in the production, marketing and credit in order to create an
economical scale, and
-
the prevailing of the new
environmental ethics in the relationship between the Human Being, the Earth and
its biodiversity and geodiversity.
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