Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
For poor countries and small island states, tourism is the leading export -
often the only sustainable growth sector of their economies and a cata-
lyst for many related sectors. It can play a key role in the overall achievement
of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. (Francesco Frangialli,
Secretary-General of the UNWTO, cited in Asia Travel Tips, 2005)
It is important now to consider how the evolution of PPT is linked to this
consensus on poverty.
Support for Pro-poor Tourism
The emergence of PPT is strongly associated with the development indus-
try's 1990s-onwards global focus on poverty alleviation described above.
Considerations of poverty in relation to tourism were seen filtering into inter-
national initiatives in the 1990s as well as the UNWTO's 1997 Global Code of
Ethics for Tourism , which stated that local people should have an equitable
share of the social, cultural and economic benefits of tourism. Similarly, sup-
port for alternative forms of tourism grew through the 1980s and 1990s,
although this did not always prioritise the needs or interests of the poor: 'One
reason that pro-poor tourism was initiated was that the “people” elements
often fell to the periphery in responsible and sustainable tourism discussions,
particularly within business' (Ashley & Haysom, 2006: 2-3).
PPT was also inspired by UK-sponsored research on sustainable livelihoods
in southern Africa (see for example, Ashley & Roe, 1998), and a comparative
study of tourism, conservation and sustainability issues in protected areas of
Indonesia, India and Zimbabwe (Goodwin et al. , 1998). Through such studies,
tourism was identified as an industry which had considerable potential to
improve the well-being of rural communities in some parts of the world and,
as a consequence, the UK's Department for International Development
(DFID), together with the Department for Environment, Transport and the
Regions, commissioned a paper to be written on sustainable tourism and pov-
erty elimination (Goodwin, 1998). Goodwin cites this as the initial paper writ-
ten on tourism and poverty elimination. However, as noted above, the concept
of 'pro-poor tourism' was first used in a report commissioned by DFID in
1999 (Deloitte & Touche, 1999). The British delegation to the 1999 meeting
of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD7) then used this
research to get tourism as a means of poverty alleviation on the agenda. After
CSD7, governments were urged to 'maximise the potential of tourism for
eradicating poverty by developing appropriate strategies in cooperation with
all major groups, indigenous and local communities' (IIED, 2001: 41).
Following this, in 2000 the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) initi-
ated a research project focused on analysing the theoretical basis of PPT and
examining case studies of tourism in practice (Ashley et al. , 2001). This
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