Cruise Control

Fresh back from my trip to the southern and eastern Caribbean, I've been mulling over the hot button issue of cruise ship sustainability. On Bonaire, local concerns were at a fever pitch over the imminent arrival of cruise tourism which will almost double the islands tourism arrivals over the next year. I've written here before about cruise tourism and coral reefs, and after visiting Bonaire and listening to different stakeholder views I'm not sure I have any greater clarity on the topic. In many project sites I manage (Mexico, Belize, Hawaii, Fiji), cruise ship tourism is one of the top perceived reef threats identified by stakeholders. But it's important to emphasize that these are perceived threats. Unfortunately, scant site-based empirical data exists that directly ties cruise tourism to reef health decline.

Those linkages we suspect to be at play are what you might call the usual suspects of cruise tourism objections: overcrowding of reef resources and poor supervision of cruise passengers, anchor damage or ship groundings on coral, and increased nutrient loading (eutrophication) from ship or land-based sewage discharge. And while not a direct reef impact, concomitant effects on coral reef destinations might include overcrowding of port resources (restaurants, shops, roads, etc.), inequities in revenue distribution to cities/towns/villages not visited by passengers, and overall decline in visitor perceptions and experience as a result of mass tourism.

The combination of all these issues makes for a constantly moving target in any effort to build and promote sustainable tourism in coral reef destinations. You might imagine then that before working to build sustainability, it's important to have some sort of idea of what sustainable tourism looks like. But sustainability means different things to different stakeholders. There's a certain Clinton-esque quality to defining sustainability (I often hear colleagues using phrases such as "Well that all depends on what sustainable means.")

One definition of sustainable tourism I've found by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States resonates for me because of its inclusion of some very significant components:

The optimal use of natural and cultural resources for national development on an equitable and self sustaining basis to provide a unique visitor experience and an improved quality of life through partnership among government, the private sector and communities.

So what really stands out in this definition of sustainable tourism? What I like is that this definition includes the need for tourism to be equitable and self sustaining, provide a unique visitor experience, and ensure an improved quality of life for destination residents. Sustainable tourism isn't just about safeguarding natural resources such as coral reefs. The principles behind sustainable tourism speaks also to ensuring equity and cultural sustainability as well. If local residents do not receive support or fair benefits from tourism, they are unlikely to support conservation activities to protect those natural resources that are often the primary draw for tourism visitation in the first place.

Opponents to cruise tourism are often quick to claim that by it's very nature, cruise tourism is antithetical to sustainable tourism. And in many examples one might point out, this is unfortunately true. The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, second largest barrier reef system on the planet--extending from the the tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula to the Honduras Bay Islands--has been a cruise ship destination for decades. If you query most environmentalists along the Yucatan, they would probably not point to current cruise tourism practices or volume as sustainable. Not surpirsingly, you'll get a different story from cruise line executives.

In Mexico and Belize, marine protected areas (MPAs) are often associated with cruise ship ports of call. Whereas non-cruise ship visitors are required to pay user fees to snorkel or dive within the MPAs, cruise passengers pay no such user fee and therefore do not support reef management activities.

Cruise ships are not asked to pay a concession fee (essentially a fee to conduct business) for operating in or around MPAs. While many larger cruise ships have their own on-board sewage treatment facilities, some cruise ships still off-load their sewage and gray water to port sewage facilities that adds greater processing burden on destination systems. In many ports of call, cruise passengers looking to spend cash on souvenirs are often offered "duty free shops" or similar contrived shopping areas convenient to boats that ferry passengers to and from the ship. As a result, passengers are not offered an authentic experience with locals and revenue generated may not necessarily stay within the destination. And finally, cruise ships often negotiate lowest-bid contracts with local marine tourism operators (snorkel-dive-fishing) who typically have no group size limits, and provide minimal visitor supervision in sensitive coral reef areas.

In my opinion, the question of whether mass tourism can be sustainable tourism hinges on yet another definition: How massive is the mass tourism? The answer to this question needs to be tailored to the particulars of the destination in question. It's honestly not a tube sock, one-size-fits-all answer. This site-specific tourism volume at which ecological and cultural health and authenticity can be sustained is often called the carrying capacity, borrowing its use from the ecological principle of the same name. Ecological carrying capacity represents the total life a system can support--based on available habitat and resources. Similarly, tourism carrying capacity provides a benchmark for sustainable visitor limits to a destination. It's important to remember that determining the limit of visitors does not constitute a goal in itself, but a way (and not the only one) to protect the natural resources of an area.

Okay, so let's figure out the carrying capacity of destinations around the world and once and for all determine sustainable limits. Easier said than done. As it turns out, carrying capacity studies are more art than science. The August 2004 issue of MPA News described the challenges,

Assessing the carrying capacity of an MPA involves a number of factors, though some scientists suggest there may be general capacity limits for particular habitat types, like coral reefs. However, actual implementation of these hard limits on numbers of tourists can be politically difficult. For this reason, some experts suggest an alternative way to manage tourism impacts: estimating the "limits of acceptable change" for protected sites instead.

The concept of limits of acceptable change, or LAC, was first suggested by Stephen McCool (best last name, ever!), a professor at the School of Forestry at the University of Montana, Missoula. His framework for estimating the LAC for an ecosystem involves four major components:

• Specification of acceptable and achievable resource and social conditions, defined by a series of measurable parameters;
• Analysis of the relationship between existing conditions and those judged to be acceptable;
• Identification of actions necessary to achieve these conditions; and
• A program of monitoring and evaluation of management effectiveness.

Importantly, the process involves combining the technical expertise of planners and scientists with personal knowledge contributed by local public stakeholders. None of this LAC characterization is accomplished without a lot of work. Nor does it come cheap. Engaging stakeholders and experts to this degree requires significant funding. And in contrast to a carrying capacity--which, once established, entails little monitoring apart from counting visitors--a LAC system requires regular measurements of changes in resource and social conditions to ensure that the values assigned to an ecosystem reflect current realities.

So back to cruise tourism. Do we have exemplars of cruise destinations that reflect a serious consideration of the tenets of sustainable tourism, and have undergone a robust analysis of either carrying capacity or limits of acceptable change? If anyone knows of such a destination in the Caribbean, I'm eager to hear about it. As mentioned before, the Mesoamerican reef system currently receives the bulk of Caribbean cruise traffic. Anyone who has been "fortunate" enough to be in Cozumel or Playa del Carmen when multiple ships are in port can testify that the destinations hardly provide a unique visitor experience or optimal use of natural and cultural resources. More recent cruise markets to coral reef destinations in the Pacific (Hawaii, Philippines, Australia, Fiji, etc.) have less traffic volume than their Caribbean counterparts. And being a younger market with less competition, some cruise lines have been very receptive to work with conservation groups to maximize sustainable practice.

And hope is not lost in the Caribbean either. The Coral Reef Alliance is currently one year into a multi-year collaboration with Conservation International's Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CELB) to get the cruise industry to come to the table and agree to modifications to current operations that will measurably reduce their footprint on the Mesoamerican reef and associated coastal and cultural resources.

Growth is inevitable. Tourism remains (and will continue to be) the world's largest industry and employer. It's true also that any tourism will always be a drain on the resources of a destination--I've heard a colleague once refer to tourism as a "parasite." Some hosts can survive and live full lives with their parasites. Other parasites kill their hosts quickly. The challenge will be to provide the education, tools, political will, and support that ensure that mass tourism's growth does not out-pace or obliterate the character and resources of its target destination.