Tourism and Community Development Issues - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 183

tourism that might address these vulnerabilities and dependencies. From the
1970s, responsible tourism and ecotourism, followed by sustainable tourism
development and, more recently, pro-poor tourism have emerged.
A key principle forwarded in the Brundtland Commission's report on
sustainable development (WCED, 1987) is that development can be recon-
ciled with environmental protection and used in a way that provides for the
equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of development between gen-
erations (intergenerational equity) and within generations (intragenerational
equity). Acknowledging the vast disparity in benefits and well-being between
the developed and lesser developed world, the report also called for bridging
this 'north-south' gap. Sustainable tourism approaches based on this initia-
tive, such as proposed by the World Tourism Organization (WTO, 1996),
offered holistic guidelines for sustainable tourism development but said little then
about poverty alleviation or the structural and other inequities that might
inhibit the well-being and development opportunities of disadvantaged com-
munities and minority populations.
Poverty alleviation eventually grew in importance in global development
agendas in the 1990s (see Chapter 4). The Pro-Poor Tourism (PPT) Partnership
conducted a number of studies in South Africa and other developing
countries on topics ranging from sustainable livelihoods and conservation to
pro-poor linkages and initiatives (Pro-Poor Tourism Partnership, 2005b). At
the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002,
the WTO launched its 'Sustainable Tourism-Eliminating Poverty' (ST-EP)
agenda. Pro-poor tourism refers to a type of tourism whose main goal is to
generate net benefits for the poor (Ashley et al. , 2001; Meyer, 2003). As
Scheyvens (2002b) states, PPT is an approach rather than a form of tourism.
Its orientation toward strategies that enhance benefits and opportunities for
the poor, rather than expanding the overall size of the tourism sector, means
it must address not only local community needs and issues, but also changes
needed at corporate and government levels. By corollary, multi-stakeholder
perspectives and interests need to be taken into account. Neoliberal appro-
aches to PPT emphasize the efficiency of large-scale free market capitalism,
limited government involvement (other than to facilitate free trade interests
regionally and globally) and economic growth (seen as 'development') to
resolve trade deficits and national debt, which should help the indebted coun-
try to attend to poverty alleviation (see Telfer, 2009). Alternative approaches
to poverty alleviation emphasize the development of local, small-scale tour-
ism initiatives, local control, resident involvement in planning and decision-
making, environmental conservation, capacity building and social benefits to
the local community (Simpson, 2008). Such alternative approaches to tourism
as a means of development are driven by several views, including sustainable
development thinking and the sustainable livelihoods perspective (Scheyvens,
2007a); using tourism to diversify livelihood options for the poor fits well
with increasing recognition of the link between poverty and environmental