The study of Jafari "platform" taken from a book written by David Weaver called "Sustainable Tourism:Theory and practise" provides four different perspectives for understanding the emergence and development of sustainable tourism.
According to the study mentioned above Tourism brings positive and negative impacts and gives birth to four platforms summarized as follow.
The advocacy platform highlights the economic benefits, the cross cultural and social meet and the entries for new employments. By contrary the cautionary platform argues that the unregulated tourism development creates socio cultural conflicts due to the cultural disparities in wealth and that every tourism development carries the seeds of his own destruction.The adaptancy platform agrees with the cautionary platform but suggests alternative solutions for achieving positive impacts. The knowledge-based platform rised with the growing awareness of the tourism industry. The sector had evolved and the alternative tourism is only a part of the solution. Any kind of tourism gives rise to positive and negative impacts.
Sustainable tourism derived from the concept of sustainable development, emerged in the early 1990s as a central topic of this platform.
Sustainable tourism may be regarded as the application of the Sustainable development idea to the tourist sector as to say tourism development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs.
The release of the Agenda 21 (by WTO in parternship with WTTC and the Earth Council) during the 1992 Earth Summit made the concept of Sustainable Tourism more broadly engaged and institutionalized by organizations such as the United Nations, the APEC region, Conservation International, the World Tourism Organization, the WTTC and PATA.
The European Commission has identified Sustainable Tourism as one of five priority areas in the Fifth Community Programme for Environment and Sustainable Development.
Organizations whose aim includes the Sustainability of Tourism:
OAS Organization of American States
APEC Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation
ACS Association of Caribbean States
ASEAN Association of South-East Asian Nations
OAU Organization of African Unity
Environmental organizations:
CI Conservation International
TNC The Nature Conservancy
each of which included an Ecotourism Programme to promote nature-based sustainable tourism as one strategy to promote biodiversity.
WWF The World Wide Fund for Nature
Tourism-related institutions:
WTO World Tourism Organization has played a lead role in the formulation and diffusion of sustainable tourism policies and practises since the early 1980s.
Manila Declaration claimed that tourism resources cannot be left uncontrolled without running the risk of their deterioration, or even destrucion.
The ST-EP (Sustainable Tourism-Elimination of Poverty) initiative of the WTO provides an ambitious global framework for coordinating international action.
In association with the above organizations, numerous countries engage with sustainable tourism through their national and sub national tourism organizations.
