Challenges to the Resilience of Whistler’s Journey Towards Sustainability

Abstract

The concept of sustainability is well established in political rhetoric, but interpretations of the concept are variously understood and implementation is challenging. Often the concepts of growth and sustainability are viewed as antithetical. The objective of this chapter is to examine the challenges that the resort of Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, is facing in maintaining the integrity of its innovative comprehensive sustainability model (Whistler2020) that was introduced in 2005. As the first resort governance model of its kind that incorporated policy designed to operationalize a journey towards sustainability through broadly-based, transparent stakeholder engagement in decision making supported by a comprehensive monitoring program, it has gained widespread interest from resort destinations globally. However, since 2011 there have been a number of challenges to the resort’s sustainability journey. These include: changes in local government priorities reflecting declining support (and/or inertia) relating to issues of sustainability especially amongst the business sector; and, the emergence of a new stakeholder group, that of First Nations (aboriginal) partners, as the result of legacy agreements associated with hosting the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. These challenges to the recently established sustainability pathway raise issues concerning the resilience of the new model. Building on previous research in Whistler an evolutionary economic geography approach to examine this issue through the lens of path creation is employed. Theoretically, the situation in Whistler is examined with reference to recent research applying evolutionary economic concepts that suggests more nuanced and complex interpretation of path constitution and reflects on whether or not recent events suggest a possible reversion in the resort community to more growth-oriented path dependence.