ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the resilience of social-ecological complex adaptive systems in the context of small-oceanic-island tourist destinations. It investigates the relationships between the contextualised design of tourism development and the resilience of social-ecological complex adaptive systems (SECASs) in two small oceanic island case studies, namely Fernando de Noronha Archipelago, Brazil, and Lord Howe Island, Australia, with the intenttion of shedding light on the underlying processes leading to different degrees of resilience. While Brazil first incorporated local tourism development followed by regional tourism development as strategies for decentralising tourism planning and management, in Australia: Despite a very well organised tourism sector at both federal and regional level, with a few exceptions, the organisation of tourism is weak at the local level. Analysis of global and national contexts reinforces the argument that tourism development and protected areas are both promoters and products of globalisation, thus affecting the level of dependence of local destinations to the global social-ecological complex adaptive system.
