PDF: Tourism for Nature and Development: A Good Practice Guide

From ST-BPG Online Directory
Jump to: navigation, search

Citation
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, World Tourism Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. (2009). Tourism for Nature and Development: A Good Practice Guide. Montreal, 48 + iii pages.

Download PDF


Summary The effects of tourism are often compared to that of fire: it can cook your food and heat your home, but it can also burn the house down. Tourism provides employment and income opportunities (some estimates point to 10% of the global job market), can finance protected areas and raise awareness of visitors and hosts, and often has fewer environmental impacts than other industry sectors. On the other hand, it consumes significant amounts of natural resources and can degrade ecosystems, may raise the cost of living for local people, may degrade local culture and sell it as a “commodity”, and its revenues may flow out of the destination with few local benefits.

The ultimate effects of tourism on a community and a destination depend, among other things, on the sensitivity of the environment, the policy and legal framework under which it occurs, the technologies used, and on the capacity of its many stakeholders to manage impacts and steer development towards sustainability (see examples on pages 3-4). The conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity can and must be incorporated into tourism development policies and strategies that bring social and economic benefits to host communities.

This Good Practice Guide aims to provide stakeholders with the tools to make the tourism sector more biodiversity-friendly, and more socially just. It addresses the links between tourism development, biological diversity conservation, and development / poverty reduction. It aims to raise awareness of the suite of sustainable tourism tools which have been tested globally and have demonstrated benefits to biodiversity and development. It is not restricted to any particular segment of the industry – all tourism should be sustainable. Due to the inter-governmental nature of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD), the primarily target audience for the guide is government officers and decision-makers in the ministries and agencies related to tourism (at global, regional, national and local levels). The material presented can also be useful to corporate and NGO planners, as well as bi– and multi-lateral development cooperation agencies. Readers can make use of the tools by consulting the supplementary Resources section (see p. 39).


Keywords
sustainable tourism, biodiversity conservation, poverty reduction, ecosystem services, sustainable tourism development, capacity building, monitoring, evaluation


Partner Links