Towards sustainable tourism in the mediterranean? Policy and practice in Italy, Spain and Greece

Abstract

The European Union's Fifth Environmental Action Programme of 1992 was a significant step in promoting sustainable development. The EAP's effect on national governmental policies is examined in three Mediterranean member states where tourism is a major industry ‐ Italy, Spain and Greece. These countries' embrace of the concept of sustainable development, represented, in terms of programmes and projects, a policy change in the 1990s. But this change has come rather more from a perceived threat to tourism from environmental degradation than from the influence of the EU, whose competence in tourism matters is recent and limited. There are also difficulties in translating sustainable development into practice. The concept of ‘sustainable tourism’ is more focussed, but in policy measures it has been interpreted in a tourism‐centric way. Policy has concentrated on bilateral integration between tourism and the environment, and not any multilateral cross‐sectoral strategy, and thus tends to confirm traditional patterns of policy management.