Cross-Border Tourism as an Agent of Environmental Peacebuilding
Publisher: Journal of Sustainable Tourism
Author(s): Connor Clark, Daniel G. Pilgreen, and Dallen J. Timothy
Date: 2025
Topics: Conflict Prevention, Governance, Land, Livelihoods
Countries: Mexico, United States
This grounded theory study examines cross-border tourism as an agent in environmental peacebuilding by fostering cooperative resource management in borderland regions. The Big Bend Rio Bravo region of the US-Mexico border is used as a case study, providing insight into how tourism can contribute to sustained peace by promoting conservation and geopolitical collaboration. The authors collected data through secondary data analysis and in-depth interviews with 25 tourism and conservation stakeholders. The study identified four central themes shaping regional efforts to leverage nature-based tourism for international collaboration: collaboration enthusiasm and obstacle recognition, fluidity of border dynamics, relationship-based resource management complexity, and need for a binational management structure. These findings demonstrate the fluid nature of international river boundaries in protected areas and collaboration opportunities. These cross-border tourism dynamics at a shared river boundary allow substantive tourism and resource management collaboration despite strict immigration controls and security enforcement elsewhere on the border. These findings inform a conceptual model that challenges existing border scholarship by demonstrating how cross-border tourism can leverage informal relationships and shared natural resources to catalyze peacebuilding. The study implications and recommendations suggest that sustainable, cross-border tourism should be fostered in border areas to promote locally driven resource governance and solidarity.