Inheriting sustainability: world heritage listing, the design of tourism development and the resilience of social-ecological complex adaptive systems in small oceanic islands: a comparative case study of Lord Howe Island (Australia) and Fernando de Noronha (Brazil)

Abstract

Tourism development and sustainability are pressing issues to small oceanic islands featuring important and scarce natural heritage assets; these islands normally present small geographical areas with clearly defined boundaries, typically limited economic development alternatives combined with environmental systems and resources that are fragile and difficult to restore, once modified. Nevertheless, however paramount and highly interdependent the conservation of natural heritage and the obtaining of economic and social benefits through tourism might be, they do not seem to be subject of easy control; tourism development sustainability is dependent on the behaviour of many different agents, w..