The Tourism–Disaster–Conflict Nexus: Volume 19

This chapter introduces the tourism–disaster–conflict nexus through a comprehensive review of the contemporary social science literature. After reviewing conceptual definitions of tourism, disaster and conflict, the chapter explores various axes that link through this nexus. The linkages between tourism and disaster include tourism as a trigger or amplifier of disasters, the impacts of disasters on the tourism industry, tourism as a driver of disaster recovery and disaster risk reduction strategies in the tourism sector. Linkages between tourism and conflict include the idea that tourism can be a force for peace and stability, the niche status of danger zone or dark heritage tourism, the concept of phoenix tourism in post-conflict destination rebranding, tourism and cultural conflicts, and tourism’s conflicts over land and resources. Linkages between disaster and conflict include disasters as triggers or intensifiers of civil conflict, disaster diplomacy and conflict resolution, disaster capitalism, and gender-based violence and intra-household conflict in the wake of disasters. These are some of the conversations that organise this volume, and this introductory chapter ends with a summary of the chapters that follow.

Bali’s tourism sector has seen a dramatic expansion over the past two decades, despite temporary security concerns following the 2002 and 2005 terrorist attacks. The growing influx of foreign and domestic tourists has put increasing strain on the island’s natural resources, including its freshwater sources and marine environment. This review chapter addresses conflicts within the tourism–environment–security nexus as a consequence of the increasing resource scarcity associated with the unfettered growth of tourism. This involves a fundamental conflict between economic growth and environmental preservation and – more specifically – between the promotion of the tourism industry and the protection of traditional wet-rice agriculture and cultural heritage. The ongoing transformations of Bali’s communal water management (subak) system and the threat to coastal and marine environments by the controversial Benoa Bay Reclamation Project are particularly highlighted. The authors explore conflicting views over the value of natural resources through a discussion of different approaches to achieving a balance between economic, ecological and socio-cultural goals. This includes investigation of rights-based and polycentric approaches to resource governance as well as attempts to foster qualitative growth through the promotion of ecotourism and other niche markets.

In this chapter, the authors use emerging works on geopolitical ecologies to analyze the relations between tourism and the transboundary haze disaster in northern Thailand. The region’s ‘smoky season’, which occurs between February and April of each year, has become a recurring seasonal haze disaster that is reported to be the combined result of biomass burning and urban air pollution. Drawing on ethnographic research among urban tourism practitioners, as well as a critical discourse analysis of popular and social media reports and commentaries, the authors argue that geopolitical discourses of transboundary haze production are shaped by tourists and the tourism industry in ways that perpetuate inequitably distributed disaster risk. Transboundary haze, the authors further contend, has become an ecological actor that co-produces discourses of escape among mobile tourists and residents. This research contributes to emerging work that conceptualises the geopolitical ecologies of transboundary environmental disasters in relation to tourism mobilities in southeast Asia.

In critical tourism studies, tourism has often been accused as a detrimental activity for local communities. The objective of this chapter is to highlight that there is another way of understanding tourism, one that responds to a more emancipating approach. The authors argue that from a post-structuralist perspective certain types of ‘responsible tourism’ can exhibit characteristics that promote local economic sustainability and greater gender equality as well as contribute to disaster risk reduction and recovery. Through a review of the literature and empirical fieldwork in the Fiji Islands, the authors examine the capacity of community-based tourism (CBT) to serve as a tool for locally led development and effective disaster risk reduction and recovery. The authors also explore whether CBT can open new spaces for women’s perspectives to be included in governance of local development and disaster risk management, challenging the gendered power structures within the community.

Nepal’s rich cultural and natural heritage – the basis of a flourishing tourism industry that contributes 8% to the country’s GDP – suffered heavily during the Gorkha earthquake that shook the country in April 2015. Recovery was challenged by a political-economic crisis that hampered mobility and delayed access to resources. Given the economic importance of tourism to Nepal, a revival of this industry was considered vital by public authorities and private sector representatives. This chapter discusses the response mechanisms of the tourism industry in Kathmandu to two sequential, overlapping stressors that brought challenges to the business sector beyond the usual. Interviews with hotel managers and owners, tour operators and trekking company owners have revealed that coping strategies varied from business-as-usual to completely new paths. To what extent do multiple disruptive events challenge a tourism industry to diverge from established paths of economic development? How did Nepal revive its tourism industry? In-depth interviews with tourism industry stakeholders brought forth evidence of unusual collaborative action towards a quick restoration of tourist arrivals and a positive image of the destination. Furthermore, a handful of companies have shifted their entire business strategy.

Studies of disaster and conflict often mention the Indonesian case of Aceh province because of its twin histories of separatist conflict and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, each with massive losses of life and infrastructural damages. This chapter addresses the tourism angle in Aceh’s tourism–disaster–conflict nexus with a review and analysis of the efforts to memorialise these events through the establishment of museums in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. Museums that preserve dark aspects of the past, such as violent wars, disasters and mass death must navigate the tension between providing a record of what has occurred and engaging with collective memory while not denying the individual experience of the event. The tsunami has been formally commemorated with a monumental, centrally located museum. Meanwhile, a few local non-governmental organisations with a small grant from an international donor struggled to establish a Peace and Human Rights Museum to commemorate the violence and human rights violations of the war in Aceh. Memories of Aceh’s conflict remain largely in the informal sphere. These divergent memorialisations of Aceh’s disasters and conflicts serve as a point of entry for examining how museums and their benefactors engage in contested memory politics.

There are a large number of destinations in which post-conflict tourism (PCT) might be a relevant development option. This chapter considers four destinations which have opted to use the PCT brand as part of their strategies to attract tourists. These destinations – Cambodia, Nicaragua, Rwanda and Bougainville (within the country of Papua New Guinea) – are on four different continents, had conflicts which ended in the last decade of the twentieth century and represent tourism industries at different stages of development. They were also chosen because they are at low or medium levels of development and have relatively small populations of less than 20 million people. The chapter considers the different ways in which PCT is or might be used not only to provide economic opportunities for local residents, but also as a means towards reconciliation, healing and recovery after conflicts which have resulted in many casualties and divided the people against each other. Each of the case study destinations have attempted to turn a negative aspect of their histories into an opportunity for development, with differing levels of success.

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami had a deep and long-term impact on communities along Thailand’s Andaman Coast. In this chapter, the authors examine how three communities of indigenous, formerly seafaring people (chao leh) have been affected by post-tsunami tourism developments. Taking Devine and Ojeda’s (2017) concept of ‘violent tourism geographies’ as a theoretical lens, the authors analyse various practices of dispossession, including enclosure, extraction, erasure, commodification, destructive creation and neo-colonialism. The findings of this chapter suggest that all three communities found themselves subjected to radical transformations of their socioeconomic and cultural environment, yet in distinctive ways and with varying degrees of agency.