Environmental Myopia: The Case For Bifocals

Abstract

Domestic and international tourists have major impacts on Aotearoa/New Zealand, both positive and negative. In 2010, tourism was the biggest export earner and continues to grow. Environmental consequences of tourism are also growing. Ways of addressing the environmental impacts caused by a mobile society continue to be debated from a variety of practical and theoretical positions. Place-based approaches are a logical discussion focus in addressing these types of social and environmental problems but may be associated with environmental myopia. Tourism, mobility and the principles of environmental education programs such as Leave No Trace are all contested topics within the place-based discourse. This article discusses these tensions and proposes an expansion of place-based and cosmopolitan approaches, with the Leave No Trace Aotearoa/New Zealand campaign presented as an example. The article concludes with possible implications of a more bifocal approach for environmental educators.

Place as Pedagogy: Toward Study Abroad for Social Change

“…Place-based pedagogies that connect the local to the global may offer an opportunity to rethink the local–global not as binary but on a continuum of ways to experience, teach, and understand place (North & Hutson, 2011). For example, North and Hutson (2011) outline strengths of specific (local) and universal (global) place-based approaches to environmental education. Specific place-based approaches allow for the production of deeply situated knowledge and emotional engagement.…”

“…Universal approaches ultimately allow for the development of a broader knowledge base. The in-between area of the continuum is described as “both an area of tension and an area of cohesion and collaboration” (North & Hutson, 2011, p. 234). Study abroad educators may consider how to produce an experiential learning space that integrates the two.…”

The Impact of NOLS Rocky Mountain on the Development of a Sense of Place

“…In teaching about Leave No Trace, instructors should remind students that practicing environmental ethics can be a form of engaged place-responsiveness (Watchow & Brown, 2015). Although critiques of Leave No Trace demonstrate how it may distance participants from the land (see Mullins, 2018), others suggest that embedding Leave No Trace into a place-based approach could be a useful educational strategy (North & Hutson, 2011). Instructors can operationalize a place-based approach to Leave No Trace by making explicit why a practice such as storing food safely away from wildlife is not only showing respect for animals but also represents a response of care for mechanisms of interdependence within a specific habitat.…”

“…Landscapes understood as wilderness are framed throughout the rest of this article to refer descriptively to places where natural features and forces are most prominent and that are currently uninhabited by human beings (Wilderness Act, 1964). This framing comes with acknowledgment that wilderness is a cultural and contested construct (Cronin, 1996;Fox, 2000;Nash, 1982).…”

Ecotourism and environmental sustainability knowledge: An open knowledge sharing approach among stakeholders

“…In the current era of increased environmental concern, environmental sustainability is a major strategic imperative for business and research, especially in the context of depleted resources, increased energy costs, increased levels of pollution, and damage to the natural environment (Ip-Soo- Ching & Zyngier, 2014;Maher, 1986;Walker & Redmond, 2014). As ecotourism operators are concerned with both economic returns and environmental sustainability management (Lundberg, Friedman, & Wall-Reinius, 2014), they provide the platform upon which to investigate knowledge sharing in the form of environmental sustainability knowledge (ESK) by using a KM approach among ecotourism operators, because they depend on the sustained quality of the natural environment for their existence and success (Brookes, 1999;North & Hutson, 2011).…”