Poverty alleviation through tourism
By Jasmin Garraway
Guyana Chronicle
March 25, 2007
ACCORDING to the World Resources Institute, at the beginning of 1990, tourism was growing at a rate of 4% a year.
Between 1990 and 2002, international tourist arrivals increased by 54% globally, and the World Tourism Organisation estimates that tourist arrivals will exceed one billion worldwide by the year 2010.
There is a significant body of information to support the view that tourism is one of the world's fastest growing industries. As an industry, tourism is multidimensional in nature, and it is still in the embryonic stage of development.
There are several different types of tourism activity, often characterised by the specific interests of the tourists themselves. These range from special interest tourism such as culture, nature, religious and event tourism to name a few, to the more general mass tourism.
Ecotourism, a form of nature tourism, is reported to be one of the most rapidly increasing segments of the tourism industry. Though the figures on ecotourism are difficult to compile, the WTO estimates that global spending on ecotourism as increasing steadily by 20% per year, approximately five times the growth rate of the tourism industry as a whole.
The increased demand for ecotourism can be attributed in part to the wave of global environmental consciousness. During the last 10 years, studies show a shift in preferences for nature based destinations in developing countries over the traditional European destinations.
Ecotourism, defined as "Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well being of local people" is nature based, supports the well being of local communities, and promotes local ownership. It also aims to minimise negative socio-cultural and environmental impacts, and contributes to biodiversity conservation.
These key principles make ecotourism one of the more desirable types of tourism activity, as they are related to the issue of sustainability, which should be the objective of the tourism industry in general, but even more so of ecotourism.
Ecotourism is also the type of tourism that presents some of the best opportunities, when compared to other sectors, for the direct and long term economic impacts on poor communities.
Globally about 1.2 billion people are living in extreme poverty. Poverty is a central theme in the Millennium Development Goals agreed to by 191 UN member states. The umbrella target is to "halve the proportion of people living on less than a dollar per day by 2015". Even modest earnings from tourism make a significant impact on the welfare of beneficiaries in Lesser Developed Countries (LDC's), Land Locked Developing Countries (LLDC's) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
While the tourism industry presents excellent opportunities for poverty alleviation, some of the major challenges are to match tourism receipts to the high rate of tourism arrivals and to deliver direct benefits to the poor.
There are a number of issues that must be considered in addressing poverty alleviation through tourism. Key amongst these are: partnerships development between government, non government, private and international bodies; empowering the poor and creating access to opportunities in the industry; reducing leakages and improving linkages with other sectors and monitoring the economic impact of the industry.
A major challenge is in integrating tourism with other sectors to reduce leakages and improve linkages. The success in reducing leakages will be measured by the ability of the community to provide goods and services (formally and informally) for the tourism supply chain.
The direct economic impact of tourist spending is compromised when businesses have to obtain goods and services from outside the area, thus creating "leakage" from the economy. Unfortunately many tourism projects have a high rate of leakage.
The price of taking the unsustainable path in tourism development is too high for developing countries in particular to afford. Over the past two decades ecotourism has shown promise as an important catalyst for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.
It is hoped that a collaborative approach to sustainability will transform ecotourism into a dynamic force for change in sustainable development.
(Ms. Jasmin Garraway is the Sustainable Tourism Director of the Association of Caribbean States.
The views expressed are not necessarily the official views of the ACS. Feedback can be sent to: mail@acs-aec.org)