Abstract

Since the turn of the 1990s many international development and policy-making organisations have perceived the tourism industry with its local and regional connections as a high-potential tool for putting sustainable development into practice. Recently, the capacity of tourism to work for sustainable development has been highlighted in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were adopted in 2015. This connection underlines the importance and responsibility of tourism as one of the world’s biggest industries to contribute and make a difference to sustainable development both locally and globally. The SDGs define the agenda for global development to 2030 by addressing pertinent challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, and peace and justice. Tourism geographers and allied disciplines have held strong and long-term interest in sustainability issues and have contributed significantly to this emerging and highly policy-relevant research field. Existing scholarship on sustainable tourism demonstrates the rich body of research that provides a fertile and critical ground for studies on the SDGs by tourism geographers and other social scientists in the future.