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The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets a series of sustainable development goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all by 2030. The Agenda influences tourism policy even though the Agenda resolution only mentions tourism three times. A heterogeneous constructionism approach is adopted to examine the managerial ecology of tourism and the SDGs. Managerial ecology involves the instrumental application of science and economic utilitarian approaches and in the service of resource utilisation and economic development. A managerial ecological approach is integral to UNWTO work on the SDGs, as well as other actors, and is reflected in policy recommendations for achievement of the SDGs even though tourism is less sustainable than ever with respect to resource use. This situation substantially affects capacities to do other, and create alternative development and policy trajectories. It is concluded that a more reflexive understanding of knowledge and management is required to better understand the implications of knowledge circulation and legitimisation and action for sustainable tourism. More fundamentally, there is a need to rethink human-environment relations given the mistaken belief that the exertion of more effort and greater efficiency will alone solve problems of sustainable tourism.