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Sustainable tourism as a tool for development.

The impact of tourism as an engine for development was felt in many countries.
For example, over the past years, Tourism is a major factor in the repositioning of Botswana, the Maldives and Cape Verde of their LDC status to the status of developing countries.

While tourism is an important pillar of development, It has a number of negative aspects :

• Tourism is an important contributor to climate change, which is currently about 5% global CO2 emissions, mainly generated by transport, but also by the operation of tourist facilities such as hosting.

• Local pollution of land and water due to bad treatment of solid and liquid waste by companies of tourism and tourism activities, can be a problem in some regions

• Hosting companies are often the main users of valuable and renewable resources, as the Earth, energy and water. In some regions, a tourist resort may consume more water per person that the local community with which it is in competition for the supply.

• Poorly planned tourist development and inappropriate activities can be very damaging to biodiversity in sensitive areas. Negative effects on cultural/natural heritage sites can occur where there is poor management of customers.

• Tourism can have negative impacts on local society, by restricting access to land and resources, leading to an increase of crime, sexual exploitation, and being a threat to the traditions and social and cultural values.

• Then the tourism is well positioned to create accessible jobs, the poor working conditions are sometimes found in the sector.

• The economic performance of the sector is susceptible to the influences of the markets, as economic conditions, natural events and security concerns, even if the recovery can be rapid when circumstances change.

All the negatives above highlight the need to plan and manage tourism very carefully in developing countries. This requires Governments to establish and implement clear policies on the control and management of the sector, in collaboration with all stakeholders of the tourism and the authorities.

To develop the sector of tourism in a sustainable way and enhance the local socio-economic impact of tourism, many developing countries have made tourism a priority in their national development policies, and try, with the support of donors and of development organizations, to formulate and implement interventions to increase the contribution of tourism to poverty reduction.

The European Commission is well placed to support this process by developing a comprehensive methodology to identify the challenges, the relevant needs, new opportunities for sustainable tourism and the support selected for developing countries in the formulation and implementation of sustainable tourism development projects. The approach presented in this guide is very suitable to define new directions in the efficient allocation of the development assistance, from Rio + 20, and in the new global framework for after 2015.1