Sustainable Tourism Law

FROM TOURISM TO SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 93 This remark may be surprising, but it also has some explanations and justifications. The interdisciplinarity of Tourism Law may explain why the juridical contributions to Tourism Sustainability are spread in various branches of the Law: Environmental Law, Administrative Law, Regional Law, Travel and Transportation Law and Consumer Protection, just to mention a few. Furthermore, we have seen that Sustainability Law – and Tourism Law – necessarily require international cooperation. Sustainability – and Sustainable Development, as Sustainable Tourism – require an international approach. In order to develop acceptable rules, international law must find a compromise between different, and some times conflicting, perspectives. In general terms, problems that affect old historical cities in the old world are not the same that affect natural locations in the new world. To find shared rules it is necessary to compromise, because the protection of the first must be combined with the protection of the second. The third element is a general one: the Law arrives only after the other human sciences, when the demand for regulations becomes stringent. In order to accomplish its regulatory function, the Law needs data, researches and contributions from the other sciences: in our case from management, economic and social analysis. This, as we have seen, was done. It is therefore time that Tourism Law develops a general approach, in order to draw the substance of a Sustainable Tourism Law. Tourism Sustainability Law must be built on a policy: a general policy towards Sustainability. Tourism cannot advance alone. A policy that Governments, States and Local administrations should convey.When this policy is formulated in general terms, the Law will follow. Tourism Law will follow. Sustainable Tourism Law will follow. Soft Law Policy and Law include Soft Law 141 . Soft Law was suggested – I do not know with which effective result – by international organizations, as, for example, the United Nations 142 . 141 Anna DI ROBILANT; Genealogies of Soft Law , in The American Journal of Comparative Law , Volume 54, 2006, Page 499. 142 A good definition of Soft Law may be found in Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy, Communication, Governance , Andreas RASCHE – Mette MORSING – Jeremy MOON Editors, Cambridge University Press, 2017, page 489: “Soft Law and Hard Law operate on a continuum; they are not dichotomous. Soft Law differs from Hard Law in three ways: 1. It refers to regulation that is not legally binding and hence contains lower level of obligation to relevant rules and non legal punishment for failure to comply with them; 2. It is less precisely formulated and 3. It can rest on the delegation of authority to non-state actors to make and enforce relevant rules”.