It has long been recognized that small island developing states (SIDS) are
confronted with a unique array of developmental challenges and
opportunities. Their smaller scale often means that the many forms of
everyday civic participation themselves constitute national level discourse.
The selective identification and representation of environmental problems
and crises is itself a political process (Blakie and Brookfield 1987; Bryant
1998; Rigg and Stott 1998). The complex and dynamic nature of island life
means that problems embedded in political and economic structures are
difficult to understand in cross-sectional, or discrete, analyses. The
importance of understanding the community as a whole is often lost in
polarizations that emphasize single issues and complexities that reinforce the
status quo.
In response, the study of political ecology has sought to widen the range
of acceptable scientific questions by testing for the frequency and disparity
of asymmetrical costs and benefits following from development processes.
The aim is to improve the lot of marginalized or socially disadvantaged
groups by highlighting conflicts, disparities, and the political and humanenvironmental
interactions that drive them, while challenging the path
dependent nature within each dynamic. Such consequences have been
documented at various scales (Bryant 1992, 1998; Bryant and Bailey 1997);
from local considerations such as threatened livelihoods (Bryant and Bailey
1997), indigenous knowledge bases (Bryant 1998), gender and household
resource control (Rocheleau et al. 1996; Schroeder 1993), to broader
economies, ecologies, and policies between national (Peluso 1992), and (to a
lesser extent) internationally relevant institutions (see review Bryant 1998).
This chapter takes such a scale-based approach to the political ecology of
tourism in the Caribbean Commonwealth of Dominica. It focuses on issues Tourism and Development in Tropical Islands

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that routinely and forcefully engage the island population but which have
escaped analytical discourse or examination to date, and whose persistence
suggest they will widely influence the future allocation of tourism costs and
benefits.
Dominica is a Caribbean, mountainous, and volcanic island of 750.6 km2
,
located between the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Lesser
Antilles, about one-half the distance between Puerto Rico to
Trinidad/Tobago. It is the largest, least populated isle (94.8 persons/ km2
) of
the Windward Island chain, with a population of 70 158 (2001 census).
Unemployment estimates range from 15 to 25 per cent of the workforce and
27 per cent of island residents live in extreme poverty, unable to meet basic
needs (PAHO 1999). Such conditions demand that policy makers pursue
national strategies with the aim of invigorate the island economy, and
tourism is seen as the principle hope to do so.
Non-market contributions to welfare on the island are great, in large part
because the successful human-social and human-environmental relationships
that have been developed over long extents of time. Inevitably, as tourism
brings about rapid changes, unintended consequences have arisen. Negative
social and environmental impacts from the visits are evidencing themselves
directly, from the development of tourism infrastructure/services and
utilization of tourism attractions and amenities (DNBSAP 2002), and
indirectly as impacts impinge upon ecosystem goods and services or slowly
uproot culturally embedded forms of sharing and social cohesion. These
threaten the knowledge, culture, and resource bases that make direct and
substantial contributions to Dominican well-being and to the longer standing
economic disposition of the island.