Restorative practices, marine ecotourism, and restoration economies: revitalizing the environmental agenda?

In this study, we introduce the concept of restorative marine ecotourism (RME) to explore the potential environmental gains of coupling marine ecotourism operations and marine restoration initiatives. Restoring marine ecosystems has become a priority in the international environmental agenda and the field needs novel management strategies to overcome the main challenges. Marine ecotourism provides an opportunity to couple business-based activities and ecological restoration in marine habitats in ways that produce benefits for both marine habitats and local communities. Currently, examples of good practice in restorative economy are rare, but by highlighting solution-focused objectives and practical applications we identify opportunities to realize these benefits through RME. We pay particular attention to the social-ecological factors that might drive RME initiatives in specific sites. We derive insights from land restoration practices and governance, and from existing literature on both marine ecotourism and marine ecological restoration. Focusing on diving-based tourism, we propose a set of starting points for implementing RME. We identify the potential presented by cross-sector collaborations, restorative investments, and citizen science as platforms for developing RME protocols and encouraging RME initiatives.