Abstract
The terms ecotourism, development, and have all been applied to various aspects of the global tourism industry to indicate that operators in those industries have accounted for the environmental, social, and economic impacts of their endeavors on the geographical regions within which they function. However, there has been increasing criticism that models for sustainable tourism do not account well for the long-term impacts of resort operations and how they scale in terms of local and regional economies, environmental footprint, and effect on local culture. The case of the Puntacana Ecological Foundation is cited here as a successful example of how locally focused, adaptive, and integrated sustainability efforts may provide useful models for the scaling of durable sustainable tourism activities in other regions and globally. In this treatise I describe Grupo Puntacana's work in sustainable tourism through the Puntacana Ecological Foundation (FEPC) and its programs in the Punta Cana region of the Dominican Republic (DR). These programs provide an exemplar that both informs the field and provides transferable models for scalable, integrated sustainable tourism with global significance. Formalization of these models and development of systemic indicators based on them may be useful in advancing the field of sustainable tourism and could have implications for sustainable development writ broadly. INTEGRATED SUSTAINABLE TOURISM The United Nations (UN) defines integrated sustainable tourism development as fitting into a balanced, systemic, and dynamic development model in which overarching regional and even global social and environmental issues are addressed through a local and/or regional lens (UNEP 2009). Global social and environmental issues of tourism development share positive and negative dimensions, but each case has specialized needs and conditions peculiar to the local and regional cultural and natural ecosystems. Attributes the UN defines as essential for integrated sustainable tourism development include balancing social and economic objectives with environmentally sound management; emphasizing long-term viability and sustainability of tourism, environments, and cultures rather than continuous growth or quick profit; and being adaptive to fluctuations in economic, ecological, and cultural trends. We can summarize these attributes through understanding the systemic relationship among the environmental, economic, and cultural subsystems and their interdependencies as shown in Figure 1.
Highlights
In this treatise I describe Grupo Puntacana’s work in sustainable tourism through the Puntacana Ecological Foundation (FEPC) and its programs in the Punta Cana region of the Dominican Republic (DR)
The terms “sustainable tourism,” “ecotourism,” “sustainable development,” and “sustainability” have all been applied to various aspects of the global tourism industry to indicate that operators in those industries have accounted for the environmental, social, and economic impacts of their endeavors on the geographical regions within which they function
There has been increasing criticism that models for sustainable tourism do not account well for the long-term impacts of resort operations and how they scale in terms of local and regional economies, environmental footprint, and effect on local culture
Summary
In this treatise I describe Grupo Puntacana’s work in sustainable tourism through the Puntacana Ecological Foundation (FEPC) and its programs in the Punta Cana region of the Dominican Republic (DR). An important quality of the programs is demonstration of the utility of collaboration and cooperation among local initiatives and businesses (seeking synergistic agricultural activities such as fruit tree cultivation and beekeeping), and large-scale international initiatives, such as the Clinton Global initiative, the United Nations, Save the Children, and others, to deal with preserving fisheries, coral reefs, and regionally and globally endangered species such as the Ridgway’s Hawk (Buteo ridgwayi) and Rhinoceros Iguana (Cyclura cornuta); along with developing integrated models for dealing with problems of rapid growth of peri-urban areas like Veron and the need to retrain populations for emerging shifts in employment. The success of the FEPC’s environmental programs depends on a well-educated, healthy, and secure inhabitants whose basic needs are being met (Fig. 8)
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