''If unequal opportunities are large within many countries they are truly staggering on a global scale'', so concludes the World Bank’s 2006 World Development Report. It is a global unevenness within which the barriers to immigration of Third World migrants to wealthy First World nations go ever higher, whilst the barriers to travel in the reverse direction are all but extinct. So how exactly can tourism contribute to narrowing this glaring inequality and gap between the rich and the poor? Are ever-expanding tourism markets – and the new, responsible, forms of tourism in particular – a smoke-free, socio-culturally sensitive form of human industrialisation? Is alternative tourism really a credible lever for lifting poverty stricken countries out of the mire of global inequality, setting them on the right track to ‘development’?

Tourism and Sustainability critically explores and challenges what have emerged as the most significant universal geopolitical norms of the last half century – development, globalisation and sustainability – and through the lens of new forms of tourism demonstrates how we can better understand and get to grips with the rapidly changing new global order. The fourth edition has been extensively updated and includes a new chapter on climate change and sustainable tourism.

By January 2015 the world’s richest 80 people had as much wealth as the poorest 50 per cent of the world’s population. It is a global unevenness through which the barriers to in-migration of Third World migrants to wealthy First World nations go ever higher, while the barriers to travel in the reverse direction are all but extinct.

So how exactly does tourism contribute to narrowing this glaring inequality between the rich and poor? Are ever-expanding tourism markets a smoke-free, socioculturally sensitive form of human industrialisation? Is alternative tourism really a credible lever for reducing global inequality and eliminating poverty?

Tourism and Sustainability critically explores the most significant universal geopolitical norms of the last half century – development, globalisation and sustainability – and through the lens of new forms of tourism demonstrates how we can better get to grips with the rapidly changing new global order. The fourth edition has been extensively revised and updated, and benefits from the addition of new material on climate change and tourism.

Drawing on a range of examples from across the Third World, Mowforth and Munt expertly illustrate the social, economic and environmental conditions that continue to affect the tourism industry. With the first edition hailed by Geoffrey Wall as ‘one of the most significant books produced on tourism [since the turn of the millennium]’, Tourism and Sustainability remains the essential resource for students of human geography, environmental sciences and studies, politics, development studies, anthropology and business studies as well as tourism itself.