Abstract
Geoconservation and geotourism potentially represent two ends on the spectrum of appreciation of abiotic elements. Though it would appear to make sense that practitioners and researchers in both ‘fields’ work together providing a linkage between theory and practice, the barriers encountered, and potential opportunities represented by collaboration or cooperation, have not yet been thoroughly explored. This paper documents the experiences of researchers and practitioners working in protected areas governance and management, geoconservation and geotourism, via semi-structured interviews of 30 geoheritage and geoparks researchers and practitioners. Using narrative discourse, we identified a number of challenges and barriers in conserving, practicing and managing geoheritage and geoparks. Divergence in the acceptance of geodiversity as a concept appears most preventative to the discipline in the areas of research/scholarship and assessment criteria, and conversely, a unified interpretation of geodiversity appears to be applied to UNESCO Global Geopark, national geopark and geotouristic assessments. Diverse perspectives of geodiversity were expressed against a backdrop of other constraints, such as lack of funding, inconsistent inventory and criteria and lack of recognition of geoheritage in general. There is pleasing evidence that the nature and reach of geoconservation research, practice and training is increasing, which will be pivotal to reducing reported subjectivity in assessment criteria and promoting geoconservation to national bodies. We suggest that until there is consensus as to which unifying terms and themes the discipline should actually encompass and support, there will continue to be fragmentation and scope creep between actors in geoconservation and geotouristic research and practice. The biggest concern that we identified from our research was that geoconservation professionals appear to be becoming more isolated from the development and ongoing management strategies of popular geotouristic and geodiversity sites, which has the potential to limit quality scientific communication of geoheritage and geoscientific values to the public. Now that there has been such a significant increase in global geoconservation research in the past five years, it is pivotal that geoconservationists and geotouristic professionals work together, recognising a common goal in the appreciation of abiotic landforms and landscapes.
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Notes
We attempted to obtain participation from African and more American and Asian participants, but these prospective participants either declined to be interviewed, or did not respond to our invitations.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all of the participants for their enthusiastic and insightful commentary and greatly appreciate their support of this research, including the following participants who were willing to be named: Alessia Amorfini, Angus M Robinson, Antonio Barteletti, Asier Hilario, Benjamin van Wyk de Vries, Bruce Hayward, Christophe Lansigu, Emmanuel Reynard, Fabien Hoblea, Giuseppe Ottria, Godfrey Nowlan, Jason Bradbury, John MacAdam, Jose Bernardo Rodrigues Brilha, Kejian ‘Coco’ Xu, Kevin Kiernan, Kevin Page, Laura Melleli, Luisa Liucci, Marcello Natalicchio, Marco Giardino, Margaret Brocx, Mauro Soldati, Michael Lockwood, Miguel Gomez-Heras, Nathalie Cayla, Paola Coratza, Ricardo Pereira, Tofig Rashidov and Young Ng.
We thank Professor James (Jamie) Kirkpatrick for early feedback on this manuscript.
Funding
This research was supported by a travel grant to the authors from the School of Technology, Environments and Design, University of Tasmania. Mark Williams received a 2018 Tasmanian Governors Environmental Scholarship, which in part, supported this work.
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This research was conducted with the permission of the University of Tasmania Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) (No H0017623).
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Williams, M.A., McHenry, M.T. & Boothroyd, A. Geoconservation and Geotourism: Challenges and Unifying Themes. Geoheritage 12, 63 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12371-020-00492-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12371-020-00492-1