Overtourism and the Disappearance of Sustainable Land Use and Local Knowledge Systems: A New Form of Colonialism?

Dear Colleagues,

Overtourism is increasingly becoming a prominent issue in public debates, especially in the Mediterranean.

Moreover, while the majority of views on decolonization is an imperative for inclusion nowadays, with social sciences being robustly engaged with these themes, ecologists, geographers, and ethnobiologists seem to have been a bit late in joining this vital debate.

Thus, in this path-breaking Special Issue, we invite colleagues to submit cutting-edge, innovative papers that explore the impact of overtourism on sustainable land use and local ecological knowledge as one of the most serious new (seemingly colonial) threats to sustainable rural development trajectories. This is particularly necessary, as the social and ecological costs as a result of the medium- and long-term effects of overtourism on local systems are underestimated, although the main responsibilities often lie with national and regional policy makers as well as local service providers.

Therefore, we particularly encourage submissions that adopt lenses from both quantitative ecological/geographical and historical and cultural perspectives with a special focus on cross-temporal and cross-spatial analysis.

Potential themes for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The history of land use and changes linked to tourism and overtourism;
• The dilution of local land knowledge due to tourism;
• Home gardening, small-scale farming, foraging, and fishing in touristic environments;
• Local markets and their changes due to high touristic pressure;
• The commodification of local ecological heritage and its effect on community exposure to nature;
• Food chains and procurement of food resources in places suffering from overtourism;
• The loss of community cohesion in touristic hotspots;
• The subsistence and/or resilience of marginalized groups employed in the tourism industry;
• The economic modeling of systems contending with overtourism.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Pieroni
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• overtourism
• local food chains
• ethnoecology
• ecological history
• sustainable land use
• food sustainability
• ethnobiology
• small-scale farming
• tourism industry
• colonialism
• touristic services