In Rio in mid-June governments, business and civil society will gather together to consider how we balance the objectives of development and the maintenance of a healthy environment. The challenge of sustainable development is as acute as it ever was, more so as the world’s population continues to grow and as we bump up against the limits of our finite world, oil, water, food are all increasingly problematic.

WWF with Tourism Concern published Beyond the Green Horizon in 1992, WTO and WTTC published Agenda 21 for the Travel and Tourism Industry a few years later. We have been talking about what needs to be done to achieve sustainable development through tourism since 1992. We know what to do. We know more and more about how to do it. We need to do it.

In Cape Town in 2002, alongside the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development the 1^st International Conference on Responsible Tourism in Destinations was held bringing together 280 delegates from 20 countries. They discussed South Africa’s national Responsible Tourism policy and passed the Cape Town Declaration which defined the characteristics of tourism which could achieve the objective of making “better places for people to live in, better places for people to visit”; in that order. How can destinations use tourism to make better places for people to live in?

When World Travel Market established World Responsible Tourism Day (WTMWRTD), with its partner UNWTO, they adopted the characteristics of Responsible Tourism from the Cape Town Declaration. Each year we have a series of seminars and debates which address the issues engaging people from the industry and the destinations.  You can see the programme for November 2012 on the WTMWRTD website.

WTMWRTD wants to extend the discussions and debates which happen at World Travel Market each November around the year. There is a forum and we welcome comments on this blog – we want to be controversial and to carry a wide range of views about how the industry can to take responsibility for making tourism more sustainable.

In November this year we are taking further some of the issues address last year – you can find the PowerPoint’s and some audio files from WTMWRTD 2010 and 2011 on line.  In 2012 we are taking up issues raised last year and raising some new ones.

Following up on last year’s panel session we shall be asking more explicitly “Is the industry doing enough to cater for people with disabilities?” Michael Horton raised the issues of the internal trafficking of children last year and we have a session on Tourism and Child Protection this year. This is particularly relevant to volunteering in orphanages and we shall be looking at Responsible Volunteering covering this and other issues.  For the first time we shall be looking at Wildlife Tourism and Activity Tourism – looking at how best to manage the negative impacts and enhance the positive ones.  We are also raising the issues around whether tourists pay enough towards the maintenance of the world cultural heritage, so central to many people’s holidays; and whether tourism is sufficiently inclusive of the socially disadvantaged.

On World Responsible Tourism Day, the Wednesday of WTM, we shall be debating the biggest environmental challenge confronting the industry and our place in the world and reflecting on progress since Rio in 1992. What progress have we made? What do you think?

This blog is intended to stimulate debate we want to hear your views – comment and if there is something that you want to say please send your blog entry to Harold Goodwin. (harold[at]haroldgoodwin.info

Harold Goodwin
Advisor to WTMWRTD on Responsible Tourism

Professor or Responsible Tourism Management at Leeds Metropolitan University

and www.icrtourism.org

The decision by World Travel Market to launched World Responsible Tourism Day in 2007, with the support of the UN World Tourism Organization, marked a major change of gear.  The focus on Responsible Tourism broadened the agenda to include all three pillars of sustainability economic, social and environmental and the emphasis on responsibility challenged businesses to take action to achieve sustainability.

Harold Goodwin explains the difference between Responsible Tourism and Sustainable Tourism video

This is reflected in the 2012 programme of panels and debates which includes sessions on tourism and child protection, wildlife and activity tourism, volunteering and carbon emissions from flying. Out ambition is to educate, inspire and to challenge the industry to do more to achieve sustainability. We are asking some sharp questions this year: Is the industry inclusive enough? Is the industry doing enough to cater for people with disabilities? Are tourists paying enough for entrance to the world’s cultural heritage? Important questions, but it isn’t only about asking the challenging questions, it is also about inspiring people in the industry to take more responsibility for making tourism sustainable.

Responsible Tourism is about making “better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit”: in that order. It is about using tourism rather than being used by it. It is about identifying the locally significant issues and acting to deal with them. In Cape Town the city council has identified seven local priorities: reductions in water and energy consumption and waste; increased local procurement and enterprise development; social development and skills development. The city council and tourism businesses in Cape Town are taking responsibility, managing tourism to achieve these sustainability objectives and progress is being measured against clear agreed criteria. In this way progress towards sustainability can be driven across the whole tourism sector in Cape Town and delivery measured and reported.

Over the last couple of years the phrase “Sustainable and Responsible Tourism” has gained currency. But they are not the same thing, there is a broad agenda of sustainability issues, long lists are constructed by groups like the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and most recently the European Union with its draft “European Charter for Sustainable and Responsible Tourism”. Responsible Tourism about taking action, it  is about identifying the economic, social and environmental issues which matter locally and tackling them, bringing the stakeholders together to exercise responsibility.

We need to do much more if the challenge of sustainability is to be met; over the twenty years since Rio not enough has been done. There has been too much talk of sustainability and too little taking of responsibility. All forms of tourism can be more or less responsible.

Responsibility is free you can take as much of it you can handle. But others can undermine the efforts of a few, and there is a role for government and regulation to control the free riders. It cannot be right that the efforts of those businesses which take responsibility and try to operate sustainably should be undermined by those who carry on over exploiting our environments and the public realm.

It is time move on from talking about sustainability and making lists, that was the agenda 20 or 30 years ago – now it is time to take responsibility, act and make a difference.