Policy recommendations for tourism to be a tool for inclusive and sustainable territorial projects in marginal areas

While the harmful effects of over-tourism are recognised and are the subject of redoubled vigilance, the virtues of a well-managed tourism strategy in contributing to the livelihood of a region are now recognised, especially when it takes account of cultural heritage. Sustainable cultural tourism can be defined as 'the integrated management of cultural heritage and tourism activities in conjunction with the local community, creating social, environmental and economic benefits for all stakeholders in order to achieve tangible and intangible cultural heritage conservation and sustainable tourism development' (European Union 2019, p. 8).

In this policy brief, we explore another dimension of integration than the one defined above, namely the integration of tourism activity with the other socio-economic activities in the area, focusing on two needs: on the one hand to strengthen social cohesion, and on the other hand to contribute to the preservation of living conditions at a time when the effects of climate change – considered here not only as the global warming but also including all the aspects of the entrance to the Anthropocene – are increasing from year to year and are forcing a thorough review of the relationship between humans and their living environment. In doing so, the approach developed considers the urgency of 'landing', as formulated by Bruno Latour (2018). Because of the integrated approach to tourism developed here, the recommendations are aimed at a wide range of stakeholders.

- Some of them concern stakeholders locally involved, whether local authorities and other local public organisations or socio-economic stakeholders in all their diversity.

- At the intermediate level (regional and national), we are targeting the public and private organisations that define and implement the public policies concerned (tourism, culture, biodiversity, agriculture and rural development, etc), as well as training bodies.

- At the European level, the note is aimed at decision-makers of policies to support territories, the economy and technological development.

While the action research developed by INCULTUM has focused primarily on rural and marginal areas, many of the recommendations are relevant to all types of areas, including those already heavily, or even overly heavily, involved in tourism.

The recommendations presented in this policy brief should be read in conjunction with those presented in INCULTUM's first Policy Brief (Coppin et al. 2022). This policy is part of INCULTUM D4.5 Policy outputs.