D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 5, September/October 2000,
p. 12-14)
Pro-Poor Tourism
Opportunities for Sustainable Local Development
Harold Goodwin
Tourism is the world's largest industry with an enormous potential for further growth. While the bulk of tourist arrivals are still in industrial states, developing countries are also increasingly sharing in the tourism boom. But do the poor in these countries also benefit? This article outlines strategies for promoting pro-poor tourism.
Tourism is the world's largest industry, with over 10 per cent of GDP globally directly related to tourism activities. Rising standards of living in the countries of the North, declining long-haul travel costs, increasing holiday entitlements, changing demographics and strong consumer demand for exotic international travel have resulted in significant tourism growth to developing countries. Tourism is the principal export for one third of developing countries. Tourism brings relatively powerful consumers to Southern countries, potentially an important market for local entrepreneurs and an engine for local sustainable economic development. There is no reliable data on domestic tourism but it is growing rapidly in South America and in China and South East Asia; it represents a very significant economic opportunity for many local communities.
Tourism and aid
Multilateral and bilateral aid agencies are wary of involving themselves in the tourism sector. In 1969 the World Bank created a Tourism Projects Department recognising that in the Mediterranean and Adriatic countries, and in Mexico, tourism had been a significant generator of foreign exchange and of direct and indirect employment. Internationally in the late nineteen sixties, there was considerable concern about high rates of unemployment and the ability of developing countries to service debt. Tourism sector studies were completed in some 31 countries and tourism staff regularly participated in World Bank macro-economic missions - their reports focussed on the potential for growth in tax revenues, foreign exchange earnings and direct and indirect employment effects. The primary emphasis was on national economic impact. By 1978 when the World Bank closed its Tourism Projects Department the Bank had provided loans and credits for 18 projects in 14 countries and it was the major source of funds and technical assistance for tourism development. The Bank withdrew from tourism development for a range of reasons amongst which were anxieties about the role of the Bank in funding projects to develop luxury hotels designed to attract wealthy travellers from the developed countries. This strategy was seen as inconsistent with new policy objectives which prioritised the bottom 40 per cent, the Bank's priorities were shifting towards the poor, a group which was gaining relatively little from tourism development. There was a growing literature that focussed on the negative economic, social and cultural impacts of unmanaged tourism on local communities. The fuel crises of the nineteen seventies also undermined some of the forecasts that had been made for the strength of the market and the Bank withdrew from the sector in parallel with most other multilateral and bilateral agencies.
The international agencies followed a macro-economic tourism agenda in the nineteen seventies and eighties focussing on tax and foreign exchange revenues at the national level, major hotel and resort development, international promotion and national and regional master planning all attracted funding. In the nineties the adoption of the new poverty elimination target of halving the number of people living on less than 1US$ per day by 2015 has refocused development assistance on pro-poor growth. Multilateral and bilateral aid agency agendas are shifting towards a microeconomic focus on local sustainable economic growth strategies which benefit local communities, and in particular those below the poverty threshold. With poverty elimination now at the heart of decision-making about international develop aid, the potential for using tourism to generate pro-poor economic growth is being reassessed.
Since the mid-1980s, interest in 'green' tourism, ecotourism and community tourism has grown rapidly among tour operators, policymakers, advocates and researchers. All of these focus on the need to ensure that tourism does not erode the environmental and cultural base on which it depends. The emphasis has been on minimising social, cultural and environmental impacts; rather than on positively affecting the livelihoods of the poor.
The potential of pro-poor tourism
There are a number of reasons to look again at tourism and to assess its potential to generate pro-poor growth. 80 per cent of the world's poor live in just 12 countries and tourism is significant or growing in all but one of them. Tourism is a very large sector, it is growing rapidly, and there is some evidence that it is relatively labour intensive. The consumer travels to the destination, creating additional - local - opportunities for the sale of additional goods and services - ranging from local pottery to a guided walk. Tourism can be used to diversify local economies, it can often be developed in remote and marginal areas with few other diversification or export opportunities. These areas often attract tourists because of their high landscape, cultural and wildlife values. These natural resources and the local culture are amongst the few assets of the poor.
Pro-poor tourism generates net benefits for the poor. It can be defined as forms of tourism where the benefits to the poor are greater than costs which tourism brings them. Economic costs and benefits are clearly important, but social, environmental and cultural costs and benefits, also need to be taken into account. Pro-poor tourism aims to expand opportunities for those living on less than 1US$ per day. Whilst it will also need to be sustainable - preserving local culture, minimising environmental impacts, - it will be driven by the poverty agenda. Community-based tourism seeks to promote initiatives by local communities or individuals within them, much has been learnt from these projects. Maximising the poverty elimination effect requires that the emphasis is placed on involving those people who are living on less than 1US$ per day and creating economic opportunities for them. Not all community tourism is pro-poor in this sense.
Effects on the
livelihoods of the poor
Assessing the livelihood impacts of tourism is not simply a matter of counting jobs or wage income. Participatory poverty assessments demonstrate great variety in the priorities of the poor and factors affecting livelihood security and sustainability. Tourism can affect many of these, positively and negatively, often indirectly. It is important to assess these impacts and their distribution.
Tourism can generate four different types of local cash income generally involving different categories of people:
wages from formal employment;
earnings from selling goods, services, or casual labour (e.g. food, crafts, building materials, guide services);
and profits arising from locally-owned enterprises;
income: this may include profits from a community run enterprise, dividends from a private sector partnership and land rental paid by an investor.
Waged employment can be sufficient to lift a household from insecure to secure. But it may only be available to a minority, and not to the poor. Casual earnings per person may be very small, but much more widely spread and may be enough, for instance, to cover school fees for one or more children. Work as a tourist guide, although casual, is often of high status and relatively well paid. There are relatively few examples of successful and sustainable collective income from tourism. Examples from Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe illustrate that it can match wage income in scale and that in principle it can benefit all residents, although it can be difficult to manage.
Negative economic impacts include inflation, dominance by outsiders in land markets and in-migration which erodes economic opportunities for the local poor. Impacts differ between men and women. Women can be the first to suffer from loss of natural resources (e.g. access to fuelwood) and cultural/sexual exploitation, but may benefit most from physical infrastructure improvements (e.g. piped water or a grinding mill) where this is a by-product of tourism.
Positive development
impacts of tourism
On the positive side, tourism can generate funds for investment in health, education and other assets, provide infrastructure, stimulate development of social capital, strengthen sustainable management of natural resources, and create a demand for improved assets (especially education). On the negative side, tourism can reduce local access to natural resources, draw heavily upon local infrastructure, and disrupt social networks.
Tourism affects the livelihoods of the poor by changing their access to assets. In several cases, tourism's impact on people's access to natural resources or physical infrastructure has been identified as the most important benefit or concern. For example, the Ngwesi lodge in Kenya was developed by members of the Ngwesi group ranch (a registered group of around 500 pastoral households with collective tenure rights over their land). A recent participatory assessment of livelihood impacts revealed that impacts on natural capital, particularly grazing resources, and access to physical infrastructure are more important to most members than the nearly 50 new jobs. The wildlife/wilderness area around the lodge provides emergency drought grazing. The lodge's physical presence, radio, and vehicle help to keep others out and provide emergency access to a hospital, which was previously lacking.
However, there are more numerous examples where local residents lose access to local natural resources. A comparative study by Shah and Gupta provides a range of examples. On Boracay Island in the Philippines, one quarter of the island has been bought by outside corporations, generating a crisis in water supply and only limited infrastructure benefits for residents. Similarly in Bali, Indonesia, prime agricultural land and water supplies have been diverted for large hotels and golf courses while at Pangandaran (Java, Indonesia) village beach land, traditionally used for grazing, repairing boats and nets, and festivals, was sold to entrepreneurs for a 5-star hotel.
Cultural impacts of tourism
can be positive or negative
Local residents often highlight the way tourism affects other livelihood goals - whether positively or negatively - such as cultural pride, a sense of control, good health, and reduced vulnerability. Socio-cultural intrusion by tourists is often cited as a negative impact. Certainly sexual exploitation particularly affects the poorest women, girls and young men. The poor themselves may view other types of cultural change as positive. Tourism can also increase the value attributed to minority cultures by national policy-makers. Overall, the cultural impacts of tourism are hard to disentangle from wider processes of development.
The overall balance of positive and negative livelihood impacts will vary enormously between situations, among people and over time, and particularly in the extent to which local priorities are able to influence the planning process. The application of a 'sustainable livelihoods framework' is essential to developing pro-poor approaches. The distribution of livelihood impacts has to be considered. The poor are far from being a homogenous group. The positive and negative impacts of tourism will inevitably be distributed unevenly among poor groups, reflecting different patterns of assets, activities, opportunities and choices. The most substantial benefits, particularly jobs, may be concentrated among few. Net benefits are likely to be smallest, or negative, for the poorest. A recent review, by Shah & Gupta, of two dozen case studies in Asia indicates economic gains for all sections of the community, but with those already better off gaining most.
Policies to enhance
pro-poor tourism
Despite innumerable case studies of tourism development, there is relatively little assessment of practical experience in strategies to make tourism more pro-poor. Nevertheless, lessons can be drawn from a wealth of small initiatives (many from 'community tourism' or 'conservation and development' programmes), supplemented by expanding knowledge on 'pro-poor growth strategies', several policy implications clearly emerge.
1. Put poverty issues
on the tourism agenda
A first step is to recognise that enhancing the poverty impacts of tourism is different from commercial, environmental, or ethical concerns. PPT can be incorporated as an additional objective, but this requires pro-active and strategic intervention. There may well be trade-offs to make - for example between attracting all-inclusive operators and maximising informal sector opportunities, or between faster growth through outside investment, and slower growth building on local capacity. These trade-offs need to be addressed.
2. Enhance economic opportunities
and a wide range of impacts
Two approaches need to be combined:
Expand poor people's economic participation by addressing the barriers they face, and maximising a wide range of employment, self-employment and informal sector opportunities;
incorporate wider concerns of the poor into decision-making. Reducing competition for natural resources, minimising trade-offs with other livelihood activities, using tourism to create physical infrastructure that benefits the poor and addressing cultural disruption will often be particularly important.
3. A multi-level approach
Pro-poor interventions can and should be taken at three different levels:
this is where pro-active practical partnerships can be developed between operators, residents, NGOs, and local authorities, to maximise benefits;
national policy level - policy reform may be needed on a range of tourism issues (planning, licensing, training) and non-tourism issues (land tenure, business incentives, infrastructure, land-use planning);
international level - to encourage responsible consumer and business behaviour, and to enhance commercial codes of conduct.
4. Work through partnerships,
including business and tourists
National and local governments, private enterprises, industry associations, NGOs, community organisations, consumers, and donors all have a role to play. It is particularly important to engage businesses, and to ensure that initiatives are commercially realistic and integrated into mainstream operations. Private operators will not be able to devote substantial time and resources to developing pro-poor actions. NGOs and donors can help in reducing the transaction costs of changing commercial practice - for example, facilitating the training, organisation, and communication that would enable businesses to use more local suppliers. Changing the attitudes of tourists (at both international and national levels) is also essential if pro-poor tourism is to be commercially viable and sustainable.
5. Incorporate pro-poor tourism
approaches into mainstream tourism
Pro-poor tourism should not just be pursued in niche markets (such as eco-tourism or community tourism). It is even more important that mass tourism is developed in ways that benefit the poor. It is also important to assess which tourism segments are particularly relevant to the poor. Domestic tourists are likely to be important customers.
6. Reform
decision-making systems
It is impossible to prescribe exactly how each tourism enterprise should develop in ways that best fit with livelihoods. The most important principle is to enhance the participation of the poor. Three different ways of doing this can be identified:
Strengthen rights at local level (e.g. tenure over tourism assets), so that local people have market power and make their own decisions over developments.
Develop more participatory planning.
Use planning gain and other incentives to encourage private investors to enhance local benefits. These approaches require implementation capacity among governmental and non-governmental institutions within the destination, and require a supportive national policy framework.
It is time to reconsider the role of tourism in contributing to pro-poor development. Tourism should be judged against other possible strategies and where it offers the best opportunities for pro-poor growth, or where it can make a useful contribution by increasing the diversity of opportunities for the poor, tourism it should be considered. However, careful and effective local management will be essential if it is to contribute to meeting poverty targets and if tourism dependency is to be avoided.
Dr Harold Goodwin is Director, Centre for Responsible Tourism, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Greenwich.
This article draws heavily on Tourism and poverty elimination Deloitte & Touche for DFID 1999 and Pro-Poor Tourism: Putting Poverty at the Heart of the Tourism Agenda Ashley C, Boyd, D & Goodwin H Overseas Development Institute NRP 51 March 2000
D+C Development and Cooperation,
published by: Deutsche Stiftung für internationale Entwicklung (DSE)
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