9.4: Tourism, Inequality, and Sustainability

Voices from the Forest

The morning mist in Madagascar’s Andasibe-Mantadia Reserve clings to the canopy like gauze. Below, Ravelo, a 32-year-old local guide, adjusts the strap of her handmade raffia bag and whispers to her group of European tourists: “ Tourists come for the lemurs, but stay for our stories ” (UNWTO, 2023, p. 44). She earns the equivalent of eight U.S. dollars per day, half of which she spends on her daughter’s schoolbooks. When visitors marvel at the indri lemurs calling through the forest, Ravelo reminds them that those cries echo inside fragile economies: “Each photo helps pay a family’s rice.” Her words embody the paradox of tourism in the Global South—where sustainability rhetoric coexists with structural precarity (ILO, 2022; UNESCO, 2021). Her livelihood, eight U.S. dollars a day, depends on balancing ecology and economy. She embodies the intersection of SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 8, where empowerment meets precarity.

Tourism’s geography reflects inequality. UNWTO (2023) records that 60 percent of global departures originate from ten countries, while the Global South bears the environmental costs. In Turkmenistan, marble hotels rise while nomadic herders are excluded from planning (Henderson & Gursoy, 2020). ILO (2022) finds women’s participation in formal tourism jobs across Central Asia remains below 35 percent. As Hall (2022) argues, sustainability without justice sustains imbalance.

Ravelo’s story situates global tourism within SDG 8—“Decent Work and Economic Growth”—but also exposes its fault lines. While ecotourism generates critical revenue for biodiversity conservation, most profits still flow to international operators rather than to women guides like her (Scheyvens & Biddulph, 2018). UNWTO (2023) admits that “the global distribution of tourism income remains among the most unequal of any service industry.” Madagascar’s forest reserves thus become classrooms for both ecology and economics: places where the global North’s leisure intersects with the global South’s labor. 

Labor structures remain precarious. The ILO (2023) estimates half of tourism employment worldwide is informal. Women dominate front-line roles yet lack social protection (Ferguson, 2011). Ravelo’s cooperative in Alaotra demonstrates that profit-sharing doubles women’s income when communities manage tourism directly (UNDP, 2022).

Ecological sustainability compounds social tension. UN Environment Programme (2022) identifies tourism as responsible for 8 percent of global emissions. Madagascar’s ecotourism markets itself as carbon-light, but long-haul flights contradict that narrative (Gössling & Scott, 2021). Nauru’s post-phosphate landscape now hosts cruise ships that strain its freshwater—an emblem of ecological debt (Hickel, 2020). UNESCO’s Culture | 2030 Indicators (2021) recommend including cultural resilience—not only carbon counts—within sustainability indices. 

Cultural justice is equally vital. Among the Sámi, Indigenous guides reinterpret reindeer herding as living pedagogy (Jokela, 2020). In Brazil’s Amazon, eco-cooperatives reinvest tourism profits into forest protection (UNWTO, 2023). These models enact SDG 10 and SDG 16, proving that empowerment lies in authorship.

Regenerative tourism reframes travel as restoration. Pollock (2019) describes it as “leaving places better than found.” Community lodges in Nepal, youth training in Turkmenistan (UNDP, 2023), and Iceland’s “Human Touch” initiative (Tourist Board of Iceland, 2023) embody this ethos. Technology, when transparent, can assist: blockchain booking cooperatives pay guides directly, bypassing exploitative intermediaries (OECD, 2024). As UNWTO’s Secretary-General Pololikashvili (2023) declares, “Tourism must evolve from extraction to regeneration.”

Ravelo’s story threads these debates together. Sustainability, she insists, is “not theory—it’s dinner on the table.” Her voice reminds us that tourism’s future depends on inclusive systems where livelihoods, culture, and climate resilience grow together.

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Uneven Geographies of Travel

Tourism maps privilege onto geography. Flights, currencies, and passports determine who travels and who serves. As Hall (2022) notes, “Mobility is not freedom when only some can afford to move.” According to UNWTO (2023), over 60 percent of outbound tourists originate from just ten countries, yet the environmental and social costs are borne disproportionately by the developing world. The OECD (2024) calls this the “carbon inequality of leisure.”

In destinations like Madagascar, Turkmenistan, and Brazil’s Amazon region, tourism revenue often supports conservation while reinforcing dependency on volatile global demand (Scheyvens & Biddulph, 2018; UN Environment Programme [UNEP], 2022). UNESCO’s World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism Programme (2021) highlights that SDG 10—reducing inequalities—requires “redistributing value chains from the air to the ground,” ensuring that local communities manage and benefit from heritage resources. Yet, elite control of airlines, booking platforms, and resort investments sustains a north-to-south flow of wealth. This pattern mirrors the dependency theories of global development revisited by Bianchi (2018), where leisure consumption reproduces post-colonial hierarchies under neoliberal disguise.

Cultural geography reinforces these divides. In Turkmenistan’s Kopet-Dag Mountains, state-led tourism showcases marble hotels while excluding nomadic herders from decision-making. Scholars describe this as “heritage without hosts” (Henderson & Gursoy, 2020), where landscapes are curated for outsiders but silenced for residents. ILO (2022) observes that women’s participation in formal tourism employment remains below 35 percent in Central Asia, reflecting entrenched gendered hierarchies of labor.

At the same time, climate vulnerability deepens inequality. The UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO, 2023) warns that destinations most dependent on tourism—small island and biodiversity-rich states—face the highest risks from global heating. In Nauru, for instance, coral-reef degradation threatens both livelihoods and national identity. The moral geography of travel thus aligns directly with SDG 13 (Climate Action): sustainability cannot exist without justice.

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Labor and Precarity in the Tourism Industry

Behind every flight attendant, street vendor, and ecoguide lies an invisible infrastructure of precarious work. The International Labour Organization (ILO, 2022) estimates that one in ten global jobs depend on tourism, yet nearly half of these are informal or seasonal. During COVID-19, 120 million tourism workers lost employment worldwide, with women and youth most affected (UNWTO, 2021). Madagascar’s guides, Brazil’s beach vendors, and Turkmenistan’s artisans faced income collapse overnight. ILO Director-General Gilbert Houngbo (2023) remarked, “Tourism’s recovery must rebuild not only markets but dignity.”

The feminization of tourism labor reveals deep structural asymmetry. Women dominate low-wage, customer-facing roles while men occupy managerial and transport sectors (Ferguson, 2011; ILO, 2022). Ravelo’s earnings mirror this divide: though tourists perceive her as an ambassador of sustainability, her contract classifies her as “temporary labor,” excluding health insurance and maternity benefits. UNESCO (2021) notes that empowering women through equitable employment is essential to achieving SDG 5 and SDG 8 simultaneously. Community cooperatives in Madagascar’s Alaotra region have experimented with profit-sharing ecotourism, doubling women’s income compared to private operators (UNDP, 2022). Such local innovations demonstrate that structural change can emerge from micro-practices of fairness.

However, the pursuit of “authenticity” often masks new forms of exploitation. MacCannell’s (1976) concept of staged authenticity resurfaces in the employment of locals as cultural performers rather than decision-makers. In Brazil’s Amazon lodges, indigenous women dance nightly for guests while being excluded from board meetings deciding park policy (Bunten, 2018). Similarly, in Japan’s heritage towns such as Takayama, service workers from Southeast Asia fill labor shortages yet face restricted visas and limited union protection (Yamashita, 2021). Tourism thus reveals what Bauman (2013) called the “liquid modernity” of labor—flexible, disposable, and emotionally draining.

ILO (2022) proposes a rights-based framework for “Decent Work in Tourism,” urging states to legislate living wages, enforce social protection, and regulate platform-based gig work like Airbnb hosting. This aligns with UNESCO’s and UNWTO’s emphasis on inclusive recovery. The challenge lies in reconciling market efficiency with human sustainability. As the UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili (2023) stated, “Tourism must transform from extraction to regeneration.” For Ravelo, this transformation would mean not only more visitors but more voice.

Ecological Debt and Sustainable Transitions

The global tourism economy operates on an ecological overdraft. Every flight, cruise, and selfie at a coral reef withdraws from the Earth’s environmental capital. UNWTO (2023) calculates that tourism contributes roughly 8 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, largely through air transport and luxury accommodation. As Hall (2022) writes, “Sustainability in tourism is often pledged rhetorically yet practiced marginally.” The concept of ecological debt—where the Global North’s consumption outpaces the Global South’s ecological capacity—has become central to critical tourism studies (Gössling & Scott, 2021).

Madagascar’s forest-based ecotourism illustrates this contradiction vividly. While marketed as “carbon-light travel,” most visitors arrive by long-haul flights emitting several tons of CO₂ per passenger (UNEP, 2022). Tour operators often offset these emissions by purchasing credits abroad rather than funding local reforestation, perpetuating what Hickel (2020) calls “green colonialism.” Similarly, Nauru—once mined hollow by phosphate extraction—now hosts cruise ships that strain its limited freshwater supply. UNESCO’s (2021) Culture | 2030 Indicators recommend that sustainability metrics include cultural resilience, not just carbon counts, ensuring that communities like Nauru’s define their own thresholds for regeneration.

In Iceland, overtourism threatens fragile volcanic landscapes. The national “Share with Care” campaign reminds travelers that geotagging sensitive sites accelerates erosion (Tourist Board of Iceland, 2023). Yet Iceland’s rapid growth as an Instagram destination exemplifies what Becken (2021) calls the paradox of eco-visibility: the more nature is admired online, the faster it is consumed. To honor SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption) and SDG 13 (Climate Action), scholars argue for “degrowth tourism”—a deliberate reduction in volume to protect ecological integrity (Fletcher et al., 2019).

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Cultural Justice and Indigenous Rights

Tourism’s ethical future depends on cultural justice—the right of communities to control how they are seen. UNESCO’s Declaration on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005) insists that heritage is not a product but a living relationship. Yet in many contexts, Indigenous groups remain the subjects rather than authors of tourism narratives.

Among the Sámi of northern Scandinavia, reindeer herders increasingly curate their own storytelling tours that teach climate adaptation through ancestral knowledge. As Jokela (2020) notes, such initiatives “translate sovereignty into pedagogy.” Similarly, First Nations in Canada now co-manage heritage parks like Gwaii Haanas, combining ecological and cultural stewardship (UNESCO, 2022). These models embody SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and SDG 8 (Decent Work) by generating income through self-representation rather than commodified performance.

In Central Asia, particularly in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, heritage tourism often excludes local artisans from design decisions. Studies by ILO (2022) reveal that women craftworkers rarely receive intellectual-property protection for their designs sold in state souvenir shops. UNESCO’s Creative Economy Report (2023) urges governments to ensure “fair remuneration for traditional-knowledge bearers.” Addressing these inequities requires what Escobar (2018) terms pluriversal development—recognizing multiple modernities instead of a single Western template of progress.

Meanwhile, in Brazil’s Amazon, Indigenous federations have negotiated eco-tourism cooperatives that reinvest profits into forest monitoring. One leader explained, “Tourism can protect our trees if it listens, not dictates” (UNWTO, 2023, p. 58). Such community governance transforms visitors into witnesses rather than consumers, advancing the human-rights-based approach endorsed by UNESCO (2021).

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Regenerative and Community Tourism

If sustainability means doing less harm, regeneration means leaving places better than found. The regenerative-tourism paradigm—popularized after COVID-19—seeks circular economies where waste, energy, and cultural value feed back into local systems (Pollock, 2019). In Madagascar, women’s cooperatives use visitor fees to fund replanting of native species, blending livelihood and landscape restoration (UNDP, 2022). This practice aligns with UNESCO’s (2021) call for “culture-led recovery” as a pillar of resilience.

Turkmenistan’s desert oases demonstrate a contrasting model: tightly controlled “cultural showcases” with limited community voice. Yet pilot programs supported by UNDP (2023) in the Karakum Desert train local youth as sustainability ambassadors, reorienting tourism toward education rather than spectacle. Across contexts, the shared metric becomes agency—who decides, who benefits, and who belongs in the future of travel.

ILO (2023) stresses that achieving SDG 8 demands formalizing informal tourism jobs and embedding social-protection floors. The UN Global Code of Ethics for Tourism (UNWTO, 2019) frames hospitality as a reciprocal right, asserting that “local populations should share equitably in the economic, social and cultural benefits.” Regenerative models such as community homestays in Nepal or heritage routes in Kyrgyzstan prove that equitable design is not utopian but pragmatic.

Technological innovation can aid these transitions. Blockchain-based booking cooperatives now allow direct payments to guides, bypassing extractive intermediaries (OECD, 2024). UNESCO’s AI and Cultural Diversity Report (2022) encourages such open-source systems as tools for transparency, linking digital ethics with sustainability.

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Conclusion – Toward Equity in Motion

Tourism, in its most ideal form, should be a dialogue between hosts and guests. Yet as this chapter has traced—from Madagascar’s forests to Nauru’s reefs and the Sámi tundra—inequality shadows every journey. The industry’s challenge is to convert mobility from privilege into partnership. As UNWTO (2023) declared, “Travel is a right of humanity only if it honors the rights of those visited.”

For Ravelo, the Malagasy guide, sustainability is not an abstract policy but a lived aspiration: clean water for her village, fair pay for her colleagues, forests that still sing with lemurs. Her voice joins a global chorus calling for regeneration over extraction, solidarity over spectacle. By aligning tourism with SDGs 8, 10, 12, and 13, and the ethical frameworks of UNESCO, ILO, and OECD, the path forward becomes clear. The future of travel depends on remembering that every footprint—digital or physical—marks both a place and a person.