Sustainable Tourism Law

FROM TOURISM TO SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 73 3) Ensure viable, long-term economic operations, providing socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders that are fairly distributed, including stable employment and income-earning opportunities and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty alleviation ” 66 . It is clear that “Sustainable Tourism” is strictly connected with ecology and sustainability in the wider sense: environmental and social respect. It is a segment of a much greater reality, that interacts with ecology, protection of the environment, sustainability and therefore with the relation between man and nature. It is also clear that Sustainable Tourism is part of and derives from “Sustainable Development”, a movement that has evolved in the last decades. Let’s, therefore, try to sketch its evolution. IX. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Ecology and environment The first approach of man with nature was antagonistic. The first chapter of the Genesis suggested man should subdue the Earth and rule over animals 67 . At the same time, Nature was personified and worshipped: Γεα the earth, Αίολος the wind, ∏ οσειδ ῶ ν the sea. Humans may alter and transform nature to take vital benefits, but they must also respect it: “ For centuries humans have tried to achieve a durable balance that would allow them to survive harmoniously with nature: both using it for their own needs and venerating it for its unique features and qualities ” 68 . Earlier in our history, the Earth and the environment were definitely exploited and altered, but this action had no substantive negative effects because of the immensity of the Earth. As time passed, and with the Industrial revolution of the XVII century, the delicate equilibrium between man and nature reached a critical point. There were no more virgin lands to discover. Nature had disclosed all her secret places. The 66 http://www2.unwto.org/content/about-us-5. 67 Genesis 1,28: God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 68 Maria Vittoria FRANCESCHELLI, Organization Active Within the Green Economy: Toward a Sustainable Business Administration , PhD Thesis, 2016, page 9.