The Triggering Role of Europe in Mallorca Development

Thus, sustainable tourism is nowadays environmentally needed. To answer to coast degradation, pollution, and water supply problematics, policy-making plays a crucial role, at different levels. This part aims to analyze the different policies involved to implement sustainable tourism in coast degradation, pollution, and water supply in Mallorca and to what extent there are efficient. The role of European and Spanish policies have to be considered to understand Mallorca policymaking. Whereas Europe triggered the first policies of sustainable development, the micropolitical application in Mallorca is more efficient to achieve a sustainable tourism.

Europe played a triggering role to implement sustainable development at the beginning of the 1980’s (Pridham, 2007). Europe’s awareness of the quality of the environment for the tourists started in the 1990’s, as tourism was becoming popular (Pridham, 2007). In 1992, the council of minister decided to create an EU level policy to strengthen tourism (Pridham, 2007). For instance, the Fifth Environmental Action Programme of 1992, also known under the name of “Toward Sustainability”, where tourism was one of the five targets, aimed to “maintain the overall quality of life, avoid lasting environmental demand, consider as sustainable a development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” ("Towards Sustainability", 1992). [JA3] However, the policy efficiency has to be nuanced.

If Europe did some actions and started to integrate tourism and sustainable tourism in its concerns, its role was really limited and partially efficient. Thus, Europe failed to really impose its policies on the countries, because they were no rule who was providing to Europe full power about tourism policies (Pridham, 2007). Second, the scale of environment sub-sector related to tourism was increasing. For instance, it was difficult for Europe to implement a rule about coast beach degradation, as all of the countries were not similarly affected. It’s difficult for Europe to have “one” policy when tourism is so multi-dimensional (Pridham, 2007). If the policies were far to be perfect, they had the merit to bring the international legitimacy of sustainable development. The European policies played more a triggering role rather than a decisive role in the sustainable tourism policies in Mallorca and pushed Spain to increase its own policy at the beginning of 1990. The interest of Spain in sustainable tourism start around 1990 (Pridham, 2007). Due to the precession of the European institutions, and the destruction of many coastal places[JA5], the increase of the pollution and the problematic of the water supply, Spain’s answer was pragmatic rather than driven as such by the ideology of sustainable tourism. In general, the policies had a more strategic approach to link environment and tourism and strengthened the effort to control and limit the worth effect of tourism, and aimed to develop alternatives forms of tourism. The particularity of the Spanish sustainable tourism policies is their micropolitical application. There are directly created and implemented by the region or the municipality, rather than at the governmental level (Pridham, 2007). Thus, the Mallorca policies were able to target the main problem of beach degradation, pollution, and water supply.

The Mallorca policies have been generally a success to make Mallorca a sustainable place. The aim of this part is to outlines the motivations behind establishing a sustainable tourism policy, the process and success in Mallorca from the 1990’s to nowadays. These series of legislative acts were efficient because there were specifics and implemented by the Balearic Autonomous Community. Because it was at a small scale, the authorities were really concern about the needs of Mallorca, and able to make sure that the policies were applied. Sustainable tourism as the whole start to be implemented after the Summit in Rio of 1992 (Summit,1992). This international summit about sustainable tourism lent to the creation of Agenda 21 - a framework for the sustainable action of the 21st century (Summit,1992). Following this model, each territory can develop its own Agenda 21; the Local Agenda 21. This is what the territory of Mallorca implemented in his territory, on the tourism aspect, to achieve more sustainable tourism and make Mallorca a better sustainable place. (Dodds, 2007).

Tourism Council of Calvia approved the new urban plans and adopted as a model for sustainable development in 1995 (Dodds, 2007). The main aim of the plan was to tackle the problem of uncontrolled growth, water supply and to restore the surrounding landscape and improve the quality of amenities (Dodds, 2007). Examining the implementation of Calvià’s Local Agenda 21 sustainable tourism strategy, several climate change-relevant issues appear. Regarding the degradation of the coast beach, sea dredging which was before used to regenerate beaches was stopped (Garcia & Servera, 2003) and measures to minimize erosion were used (Dodds & Kelman, 2008). To generally fight against pollution, some concrete initiates have been instore under the Local Agenda 21. Few pedestrianized zones were created, encouraging fewer motorized vehicles in the area, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Trees were also planted to uptake carbon and provide shade against temperature increases (Dodds & Kelman, 2008). Furthermore, In 1998, the Govern Balear offered the “Proposal for a Hydrological Plan for the Balearic Islands”. This report set the targets for water supply and management in Mallorca. The following policies applied: Desalination plan in the bay of Palma opened in 1995, Recycled and treated water was privileged, and the authorities encouraged sensible use of water and which penalize wasteful and extravagant use by consumers (Kent, Newnham & Essex, 2002). Another overall solution to mass tourism is the “eco-tax”, also called “tourism tax”. Proposed in Proposal in 1999 by the Progress Pact of the regional government (Kent, Newnham, & Essex, 2002). The “ Ecotourism taxes”was Finally put in effect the 1rst July 2016, after the long discussion between the Spanish governs lent.Up to 2 euros per days, they have to be paid by the tourist depending the place there are staying... This new tourism tax is expected to bring in between €60-70 million a year which will be spent on sustainable tourism projects across Mallorca.

However, if there is a real wish from the authorities to implement sustainable tourism in Mallorca, the efficiency of this policies must be nuanced. The research of Dodds (2007) and Pridham (2007), shows that a lack of stakeholder involvement, integration, and coordination did not allow the full success of the policies. In these researches, Dodds, (2007), asked for private, public and NGO, and found out the following barriers. First, an economic priority (economic took priority as short-term objective). For instance, a highway has been constructed between the airport and the city of Clavia (Dodds, 2007), rather than the creation of more sustainable transport and the expansion of public transport. A train link from the Palma airport to Magaluf in Calvià was sidelined after the election, but a new highway from Palma Nova to the neighboring municipality Peguera was built (Dodds & Kelman, 2008). The bottom of the island is economy. There was also a lack of planning, in the way where it was hard to apply the plan, because a lot of damage where mad already is the island, as presented in the first part of this paper. Then, a lack of stakeholder involvement was an important barrier to the success of the policy. The involvement of the stakeholder, strong at the start of the LA21, came down for two mains reasons (Dodds, 2007).

First, the Mallorca Community and the outside world did not see drastic changes happening and get disappointed. Indeed, because Mallorca was really damaged because of the mass tourism, the pression on the resource were still really high. Some actions of the LA21 have been wrongly received because economics cost has risen – results of the implementation of the news policies[JA6] (Dodds, 2007). The population is a key factor to the successful implementation of the policies, they should be engaged wider in the process. Furthermore, the other face of the medal of having a micropolitical application of the sustainable policies. If there then more specifics and adapted to the specials need, there is a lack of integration with others government levels and government bodies. No regional or national coherence then create news problems in some fields, as transports for example (different kind of transport, different policies, prices). Thus, Sustainable tourism requires close coordination and communication between many other sectors: taxation, transportation, housing, social development, because it is closely linked to it. Plus, the four-year political term is not long enough to implement a plan of 15 years, and promises have been made for gaining votes. This lead to a lack of accountability by politicians.

In Mai 2003, almost 10 years after the first signs of the LA21, the plan vision was faded and not perfectly implemented anymore, due to the barriers to the implementation process. A long-term vision is required for sustainability. To conclude, integration cooperation with others sectors, wider integration of the population and long-term visions, supported at both regional and national levels are the key to realize wider policies objectives.