Governing Fragility: Tourism, Justice, and the Politics of Conservation in an Ecologically Critical Area
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Hoque, Md Ariful
Faisal, Abrar
Ara, Easnin
Shoeb-Ur-Rahman, Muhammad
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Informa UK Limited
Abstract
Tourism governance in ecologically critical areas (ECAs) remains conceptually underdeveloped, particularly in the Global South, where environmental vulnerability intersects with livelihood precarity and asymmetric power relations. This study critically examines how tourism governance in St. Martin’s Island, Bangladesh, an ECA and the country’s only coral island, is framed and contested in media discourse. The findings reveal: (i) competing media framings that oscillate between ecological salvation and socio-economic sacrifice; (ii) recursive, policy-induced crisis dynamics whereby conservation measures generate new forms of vulnerability; (iii) persistent disjuncture between policy intent and developmental practice; and (iv) a politics of policy that legitimises environmental protection while rendering local human-nonhuman entanglements conceptually invisible. Drawing on insights from policy documents and media narratives pertaining to St. Martin’s Island, the paper advances an ecological-ethical critique of governance and calls for a reimagining ECA tourism governance as a relational, justice-oriented, and more-than-human practice.
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Keywords
1506 Tourism, 3508 Tourism, 4406 Human geography, Tourism governance, strategic risks, crisis management, environmental philosophy, critical discourse analysis
Source
Tourism Recreation Research, ISSN: 0250-8281 (Print); 2320-0308 (Online), Informa UK Limited, 1-7. doi: 10.1080/02508281.2026.2690977
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This is the author's version of an article published in Tourism Recreation Research by Taylor & Francis. The published version is available via subscription from DOI: 10.1080/02508281.2026.2690977