Sustainable Tourism as a mechanism for poverty alleviation

A workshop on 9 March 2003, convened by the World Tourism Organization and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), was one of many events held at the International Tourism Exchange (ITE) in Berlin that examined current tourism trends and the effects of global tourism on the environment.

Representatives of governments, the International Tourism Industry, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agriculture Development, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and several bilateral donor agencies among others attended the workshop on Sustainable Tourism and Poverty Elimination.

Eco-tourism and cultural tourism are areas of the tourism industry that are growing in popularity and offer the potential to improve the standard of living of people living in developing countries. According to the World Tourism Organization, tourism earnings account for 70 % of all service exports from Less Developed Countries. Tourism that is environmentally sensitive and culturally acceptable has the potential to create employment for people living on less than a dollar a day.

The ST-EP Initiative (Sustainable Tourism - Eliminating Poverty) was presented at the workshop by the WTO. The ST-EP Initiative is the central component of a joint framework between WTO, the lead international agency on tourism, and UNCTAD, that aims to assist developing states and Least Developed Countries to enhance social change, trade participation and poverty alleviation through sustainable tourism.

The ST-EP Initiative will consist of:

• a foundation to access and distribute public and private sector funding
• a research base to identify best practice linkages between sustainable tourism and poverty alleviation, principles and model applications, and
• an operational framework, which promotes good practice among companies, consumers and communities.

FAO and IFAD expressed an interest in developing a special programme within the ST-EP Initiative to concentrate in rural areas. It was also agreed that a formal partnership between FAO and WTO should be established in order to investigate further the potential for tourism to alleviate poverty in rural areas.

For more information on the ST-EP Initiative click here.