Sustainable island tourism: the case of Okinawa.

Abstract: For small island economies such as Okinawa, Hawaii, Guam and Saipan, tourism has been the fastest growing and most important industry accounting for 20-70% of their external receipts. These island economies have comparative advantages in tourism because of their small market sizes, rich marine resources, tropical or sub-tropical climate, rich and unique cultural heritages, hospitality-oriented peoples, service-intensive nature of tourism. Tourism is a “service” as well as an “export” industry which will substitute for a manufacturing industry where small island economies do not have comparative advantage. Island tourism, however, heavily depends on islands’ fragile and extremely limited natural as well as cultural resources. Islands’ over-expanded tourism industry has created various socio-economic-ecological issues such as cultural friction, water shortage, environmental degradation, food insecurity, imported inflation and family problem on the life of islanders. The major objective of this paper is to identify and quantify “carrying capacity” of tourism dependent island economies focusing on Okinawa where tourism expanded about tenfold in the past three decades. Okinawa’s tourism industry is now facing a serious turning point because the total tourists’ expenditures have been declining in recent years in the midst of increasing trend of tourists who consume the huge amounts of islands’ fragile, nonrenewable resources. This paper particularly demonstrates that the supply of water is the single most important limiting factor for sustainable tourism development for any small islands.