Something important changed the world 50 years ago. It was in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s when the realization of fast approaching limits to growth came down like a hammer, striking a strong blow on business -as -usual world political and socio -economic paradigms. Of course, classical economists like Malthus had already sounded a warning 150 years before. Then, scientific and technological advances postponed the inevitable. Finally, the Club of Rome thinkers (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, and Behrens, 1972) and two oil crises dispelled the illusion of limitless growth in a small planet, with the controversy being retaken afresh in the 21st century (Meadows, Randers and Meadows, 2004; Stern, 2006; Bardi, 2011). Meanwhile, tourism was well in its way to becoming a key global activity. The landmark of 100 million international arrivals a year had been reached by 1965 and the mass tourism paradigm, inspired in the prevailing rules for industrial production (standardized products at low marginal cost), had taken deep roots. However, the complex interaction between limits to growth and tourism global figures remained generally ignored at both the domestic and international levels (Fayos -Sola and Jafari, 2010; Fayos -Sola, Alvarez and Cooper, 2014; Fayos -Sola, 2016 forthcoming). In fact, it was not really until the late 1980s that some voices were raised expressing concern about the growing impacts of tourism activities. They first referred to mainly the socio -cultural negative impacts at micro -destination level, although the environmental large scale impacts (on the Mediterranean shores, for example) were highly visible by then. But it was only in 1995 that the first Charter for Sustainable Tourism was born from the World Conference on Sustainable Tourism, held in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain, in 1995, undoubtedly inspired by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the Rio Earth Summit of 1992. (WCST, 1995; UNEP, 1992). The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development proclaimed 27 principles, without any specific mention of tourism as a global activity with many potential and actual environmental and developmental impacts. However, principles 5 and 6 (international cooperation for development), principle 7 (international efforts preventing environmental degradation), and principles 10, 22 and 27 (inclusiveness of all citizens), could be read by the UN Member States as clearly affecting tourism policy. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has received 166 Member State ratification signatures to date. In this framework, the Lanzarote Charter for Sustainable Tourism of 1995 proclaimed 18 “principles and objectives” specifically referring to the ethical, environmental, socio -cultural and economic impacts