Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
supported, having been agreed upon by all 191 member states of the
United Nations:
•
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
•
Achieve universal primary education.
•
Promote gender equality.
•
Reduce child mortality.
•
Improve maternal health.
•
Control HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
•
Ensure environmental sustainability.
•
Develop a global partnership for development.
Each goal has associated targets, to be achieved by 2015. While gaining wide-
spread support and lauded for identifying a single, unifying goal for develop-
ment agencies, the MDGs have also been criticised because, as Hickey (2008:
355) notes, '. . .the focus on targets and the narrow politics of securing quick
wins has sidelined a more thorough consideration of the institutional
arrangements and political processes required to move towards these goals'.
In a similar vein, Mowforth and Munt are concerned that no fundamental
changes are being suggested under the MDGs, rather, neoliberal reform and
economic growth are still the focus of development efforts:
. . . it is interesting to note that all the rhetoric about poverty reduction
and elimination that has emanated from the supranational institu-
tions in recent years has assumed that there will be and can be no
change in the prevailing model of development. The point is not that
the intentions to adjust policy are ill-inspired, but that they are con-
tingent upon a system which has manifestly failed to date to deliver
development to a majority of the world's population. (Mowforth &
Munt, 2009: 339)
Thus, some authors feel that an emphasis on poverty reduction is a means of
window dressing which may deflect criticism of earlier neoliberal policies,
when the orthodoxy on which the operations of many development-related
organisations are based has barely changed: '. . .one gets the strong impres-
sion that the Bretton Woods institutions are using the poverty issue as a
pretext for broadening and deepening the neoliberal agenda' (Öniş & Şenses,
2005: 280). Nevertheless, a number of agencies - including those associated
with tourism - have joined the ranks of governments and international
agencies all around the world in endorsing the MDGs. For example, ESCAP,
the Green Hotelier and the United Nations World Tourism Organisation
(UNWTO) all suggest ways in which the travel industry specifically can
address the MDGs (see ESCAP, 2007: 9-10; and Mowforth & Munt, 2009:
339-341). Thus, according to the UNWTO,
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