Tourism and Poverty Reduction - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 135

from their ancestral lands, whether for the creation of national parks and
wildlife reserves in African countries, or to create coastal resorts in Asia and
elsewhere (Carruthers, 1997; Goodwin et al. , 1998). Such tourism develop-
ment, which removes or limits their prior freedom to hunt, fish, collect
medicinal plants and meet multiple other needs from the natural environ-
ment. The new opportunities which tourism offers them are typically lim-
ited by comparison. Even if they can later earn a little money from the sale
of souvenirs to tourists, the fact remains that their land rights have been
systematically ignored and their communities may start to disintegrate as
the young and more educated migrate away in the hope of finding better
opportunities (see also Chapter 13, which examines how people's fundamen-
tal human rights are being compromised by tourism).
Poverty alleviation versus profi ts
While PPT is often presented as a 'win-win' situation for both the pri-
vate sector and local communities, this can be misleading. Chok et al. (2007: 51)
suggest that many advocates of PPT have not been realistic about the types
of trade-offs required to ensure that tourism benefits the poor:
Tourism development that generates net benefits for the poor and pro-
tects the environment . . . will place restrictions on human activity and
challenge our current rapid expansion development model. In other
words, there may be strong moral imperatives but weak profit margins.
Certainly, when one examines what real changes PPT has brought about in
the practice of the tourism industry, many examples appear tokenistic rather
than transformational. The UNWTO's ST-EP projects to train guides,
develop infrastructure and support community tourism are cases in point.
Similarly, under the guise of CSR many tourism enterprises will happily
engage in philanthropy but most are not willing to make more significant,
long-term changes to their business strategies and practices to make them
more pro-poor (Ashley & Haysom, 2006). Such more noteworthy changes
could include implementation of comprehensive policies that support labour
rights (including training, health and retirement schemes), a commitment to
joint ventures whereby the resident community's contribution is their land
and/or cultural knowledge rather than financial capital, programmes to
mentor small-scale entrepreneurs, and implementation of procurement poli-
cies that maximise opportunities for local producers and service providers.
Systemic barriers to the poor benefi ting from tourism
It is easy to surmise that the poor are missing out on opportunities to
benefit from tourism because they lack appropriate education, capacity,