10.1177/0739456X02238445 Jamal, Stein, & Harper Multistakeholder Tourism-Environmental Conflicts Beyond Labels Pragmatic Planning in Multistakeholder Tourism-Environmental Conflicts Tazim B. Jamal, Stanley M. Stein, & Thomas L. Harper As we embark into the twenty-first century, the World Tourism Organization statis- tics reveal the robust growth of tourism, with well more than 600 million international tourist arrivals in 2000, up from 443 million in 1990. One of the various tourism forms that have attracted the fancy of modern consumers and marketers is nature-based tour- ism and recreation (e.g., ecotourism), which persistently penetrates remote regions worldwide, while growth continues unabated in iconic landscapes like those repre- sented by Yellowstone National Park (United States) and Banff National Park (Can- ada). Planners and administrators of such national parks and other protected areas face increasing challenges in managing the popularity of these natural areas as tourism destinations while ensuring their ecological integrity. These are complex domains where planning is often a contested political activity involving multiple, interdepen- dent stakeholders with diverse and possibly divergent interests and values with respect to the natural environment. As the environmental planning and tourism planning lit- eratures demonstrate, issues range from sustainable (tourism) development and pub- lic participation in environmental decision making (see Getz and Jamal 1994; Murphy 1985; Stabler 1997; Tonn, English, and Travis 2000) to impact and growth manage- ment, planning and risk assessment (e.g., Gill and Williams 1994; O’Brien 2000; Palerm 2000; Weston 2000). But public participation can range from tokenism to genu- ine resident involvement (Arnstein 1969; Hughes 1995), and developing effective mechanisms for stakeholder involvement continues to preoccupy research and prac- tice. The rise of interest-group pluralism as well as greater recognition of stakeholder interdependence, conflicts, and value differences in the sustainable development of human ecology domains has facilitated this focus on public and private involvement in tourism and environmental decision making. Consequently, multiparty consensus pro- cesses are increasingly being employed to deal with natural resource-based conflicts, and researchers, planners, and practitioners have begun to grapple with process issues such as stakeholder representation, negotiation, structuring, and institutional design (cf. Cormick et al. 1996; Innes et al. 1994; Westley 1995; Healey 1997). While community-based and stakeholder-centered planning is espoused by many natural resource managers (e.g., the Canadian federal agency, Parks Canada, has pub- lic involvement policies in place), the particular processes by which strategic decisions 164 Journal of Planning Education and Research 22:164-177 DOI: 10.1177/0739456X02238445 © 2002 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Abstract This article advocates a neopragmatic ap- proach to collaborative planning in pro- tected areas characterized by historical conflict among diverse stakeholders. Our example is a multisectoral process initi- ated to address use and development con- flicts in the international tourism destination of Banff National Park, Can- ada. We show how philosophical presup- positions (essentialism and metaphysical realism) can impede collaboration and ex- acerbate problems when categories like “environmentalist” and terms like “ecolog- ical integrity” are used. Rather than fixing categories and terms up front, a more fluid planning approach is advocated; terms are flexible and meanings emerge through dialogue. Shared descriptions re- place contentious categories and terms. Tazim B. Jamal is an assistant professor in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University. Her main research areas are community- based tourism planning and impacts man- agement, and multistakeholder processes. Stanley M. Stein is resident philosopher in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Thomas L. Harper is director of the plan- ning program in the Faculty of Environ- mental Design at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.