(Brussels, Belgium, 22 September 2004)

Transcription

1 Address by Francesco Frangialli, Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization on the occasion of the meeting on Social Affairs and the Environment of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (Brussels, Belgium, 22 September 2004) Mr. Chairman of the Committee on Economic Development, Finance and Trade Mr. Chairman of the Committee on Social Affairs and the Environment Honourable Members of the European Parliament, Honourable Members of Parliament, Ladies and Gentlemen, Successive economic downturns, the tragedy of 11 September 2001, the conflict in Iraq, terrorist attacks against tourists and in large cities, the SARS and avian flu epidemics in Asia, accidents and natural disasters: we have been spared no difficulty over the past three years. The entire travel industry was affected--what branch of the economy would not have been under such circumstances? But it did not collapse. For three years now, our industry has been stuck in neutral but it refuses to slide backwards in spite of all the onslaughts it has endured, and this very fact, in such a hostile environment, confirms tourism's resilience. Twice since 11 September 2001, international tourism, measured by the number of international travellers, has recorded a negative growth. However, if we compare the 694 millions of international arrivals in 2003 with the exceptional millennium year worldwide there is still a net increase of 7 million over the year On the whole, this troubled period we are going through is far from having only negative consequences. It has led to the arrival of new entrants, restructuring and regrouping, the implementation of new technologies, the modernization of marketing techniques, and the strengthening of cooperation between the private and public sectors, to the benefit of all involved. The world tourism industry, once again, should come out of this new adjustment period with a stronger and healthier structure.

2 2 Everything suggests that growth will be back in the medium term, and that by 2010, annual international arrivals will reach 900 million--a 30 per cent increase in the span of a decade. In the face of these expected flows, now is not the time to slacken our efforts in favour of tourism that is more sustainable and more respectful of the communities and sites where it is practiced. Having become globalized in its geographic distribution, tourism now occupies a preponderant place in the world economy. This is not due exclusively to tourism's economic, commercial and financial aspects. The democratization of leisure and wider access to holidays, made possible by the rise in purchasing power, increased free time, technological innovations and the relative lowering of the cost of air transport, make it a major social, cultural and environmental phenomenon of our time. To ignore this fact is to fail to have a good understanding of the world we live in. Tourism, therefore, is a source of both risks and opportunities for host communities, and gives rise to both hopes and worries for the whole of humanity. The negative effects of tourism have been described on many occasions: the imposition of an imported model of consumption that disrupts pre-existing economic circuits and kindles frustration; the confinement of local employees to subordinate positions; the impoverishment of traditional artistic production; the loosening of moral and religious values; the promotion of parasitism, beggary, prostitution and crime; the acceleration of rural exodus towards tourism areas; or the relegation of emigrants to makeshift homes on the periphery of resort areas. Tourism can represent all of these things to man, if man does not restrain himself, and if society does not exercise mastery over tourism. At the same time, like any other large-scale economic and social activity that implies the concentration of populations within small areas, tourism, if it ignores the carrying capacity of sites, inevitably tends to alter the natural surroundings especially in the most fragile environments. It threatens those spaces that are particularly sensitive, such as high mountain areas, coastal areas and wetlands, primary forests and deserts. It harms biodiversity. It accelerates climate change, to which in turn it eventually falls victim. Since its creation, and especially since its recent transformation into a specialized agency of the United Nations, the WTO has striven to promote strategies aimed at ensuring the fair, responsible and sustainable development of tourism. The Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, approved by the WTO General Assembly in Santiago, Chile, in 1999, vigorously reaffirmed the same approach. The Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, in which the United Nations General Assembly

3 3 has expressed great interest, is both a formal declaration and an instrument for action. It is indisputably the strongest and most complete document currently in existence regarding modern tourism. The aim of the Global Code of Ethics is to highlight within the same text a large set of values related to tourism and travel, values that are common to all humanity and are universally accepted. The document states in a balanced manner the respective rights and obligations of all those who have a stake in tourism activity. It encompasses a wide range of issues, whether economic, cultural, environmental or social. On the one hand, it aims to minimize the negative effects of tourism on the environment, host communities and cultural heritage, and on the other hand, to maximize the benefits for the residents of the visited areas, as well as for the enterprises of tourist generating and receiving countries. With a view to disseminating the Code widely and making it better known worldwide, the WTO constituted the World Committee on Tourism Ethics in the fall of 2003, whose main function is to promote this instrument in a universal manner. The Committee will monitor the implementation of the Code on the part of both states and the tourism industry, and in particular the incorporation of the ethical principles set out in the Code into the framework of laws, regulations, codes of conduct and similar instruments. I would like to briefly mention three areas of strengths underlying the Global Code of Ethics and its principles: First, tourism is an especially suitable way to utilize and enhance the value of the monumental, cultural and artistic heritage of the visited destinations. As such, it serves as a useful instrument for people who wish to peacefully reassert their cultural diversity. Thanks to the income received from visits, tourism contributes to the maintenance and enrichment of this heritage. It makes it possible for traditional handicrafts to survive and flourish by providing new customers for such products. Secondly, tourism is a remarkable vector of individual and collective selfimprovement. It is generally associated with other values such as interchange, hospitality, openness to others, equality, and tolerance, on which the relationship between visitor and the visited should be based. It is an irreplaceable factor of personal self-education. Lastly, tourism undeniably constitutes an increasingly important factor for economic development, diversification and integration.

4 4 The globalization phenomenon with its positive and negative aspects has clearly benefited the new destinations of developing countries and economies in transition. Over the past decade, the annual growth of tourist arrivals in developing countries overall, has been higher than the world average. Developing economies and those in transition enjoy a net surplus in their tourism trade balance with the OECD countries, something that can be said about very few other areas of their services sector. In developing countries, international and domestic tourism creates a demand for a large number of workers, whether employees or entrepreneurs; tourism employs a substantial number of women, young people, and members of indigenous communities; it leads to the establishment of numerous small enterprises, often family-run, and opens up business possibilities for many others, outside the sector itself, which provide products and services to the tourism industry. In these countries, tourism constitutes exceptionally fertile ground for private initiative. It serves as a support for the market economy, and helps open it up to external trade. Furthermore, in such countries, the foreign exchange income generated by tourism represents a substantial contribution to the balance of payments, financing imports, reducing foreign debt, and minimizing their dependence in this regard on a single export sector, which in most cases consists of the export of raw materials of low value and subject to international price fluctuations. If we focus on the situation of just the least developed countries, we can see that their tourism receipts more than doubled in the 1990s, even if such receipts still represent but a tiny share, less than one per cent, of the world total. Tourism has become the main source of foreign exchange revenues for the forty-nine LDCs, not counting the oil industry, which is significant only in three of them. Tourism accounts for more than a sixth of their non-petroleum exports, far surpassing their second and third largest export earners (textiles and raw cotton). Tourism has become one of the main components of the GDP of many of these countries. If Botswana was able to graduate from the LDC list in the past, and if the Maldives is capable of doing the same today, it is thanks to tourism. It is true that the obstacles to tourism development faced by the LDCs, whether with regard to air access, infrastructure, communications, training facilities, or health conditions, are formidable. But they seem surmountable if they are given clear priority in national development strategies. The main difficulty undoubtedly has to do with one of the characteristics of the industry itself: leakages that, in economies that are insufficiently diversified and subject to dominance effects, flow out of the country in the form of induced imports or excessive repatriation of profits. Development policies should therefore strive to reduce this handicap, but at the same time, aim to enhance the very strong links that tourism has with other related sectors, on whose development tourism s impact could be crucial: handicrafts, construction, local fishing and farming, in particular. In poor rural areas, where the latter economic activity is often under threat, tourism, especially

5 5 ecotourism, seems to be one of the rare alternatives that make it possible to maintain employment and prevent emigration to large cities or abroad. In response to the opportunities that tourism can offer for a large group of developing countries, WTO has initiated the STEP programme during the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. STEP, Sustainable Tourism- Eliminating Poverty, already counts with the seat of its foundation and the initial contribution of 5 Million USD from the Government of the Republic of South Korea. The Government of Macau (China) is likely to follow. Some Governments of the EU have also expressed interest in providing material support to this project. We shall be approaching in the near future the European Commission in order to propose the STEP initiative as part of its external assistance in favour of the ACP countries in the field of tourism. The European Parliament may wish to support this move, which from our point of view fits perfectly in the framework of the Cotonou agreement. One of the pillars of the Cotonou partnership agreement between the EU and the ACP countries, is a strengthened focus on poverty reduction with a special attention at the interaction between the economic, social, cultural, gender and environmental dimensions of policies and strategies. Tourism, as outlined above, is a viable and decisive option for a strategy of poverty reduction through sustainable development. The World Tourism Organization is ready to cooperate and to support any initiative where our expertise as the United Nations specialized agency in the field of tourism would be required. WTO has already in the past cooperated with the European Union and the Commission. We are especially proud of having successfully carried out on behalf of the EU an important project in the area of the fight against sex tourism and the exploitation of children in the tourism industry. We are ready to respond to the Commission's invitation for us to collaborate once more, this time in the area of the promotion of sustainable tourism development and we are also looking to a greater cooperation with the European Union in the field of economic and statistical knowledge. Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to conclude my intervention with some consideration on the place of tourism in Europe and in the European Union. Surprisingly, the EU is doing more in favour of tourism development outside its borders than for its own members! Geographically speaking, Europe accounts for 60 per cent of arrivals and 50 per cent of worldwide receipts, according to WTO statistics. However, its share is shrinking in an expanding world market marked by the appearance of new entrants. In the European Union, the contribution of tourism taken in the strict sense is

6 6 reckoned by the Commission to account for 5 per cent of the EU's total GDP, representing 2.2 million enterprises and 7.7 million jobs. Tourism, which was not mentioned in the Treaty of Rome but came to be included in the Maastricht Treaty, is not currently a Community competence in its own right, although the Commission and the European Parliament are showing increasing interest in the sector. The EU does a great deal for tourism in the form of different community policies that have to do with this industry and that affect it for better or for worse. But it does so without order, without the benefit of the requisite overall strategy that can only be established on the basis of a solid legal foundation. This is the reason why WTO has consistently advocated in favour of tourism as a competence within the European Commission. In putting forward this position, the WTO had in mind the interest of Europe and that of the sector it is responsible for. It is not afraid of remaining the lone forum where Europeans can discuss tourism and cooperate to foster its development on the contrary. Tourism has been finally given a place in the EU Constitution, in response to the strong requests from several stakeholders in the sector. While this represents a positive development compared with the possibility that a milestone in the construction of the EU had ignored its existence, still the rank of tourism is not that of a competence of the EU. Tourism will be included in the Constitution as an area where the Union shall carry out actions to support, coordinate or supplement the actions of member States. It is now to be seen to which extent tourism will be in the agenda of the Union and the Commission. Despite its potential, which is exceptional in all respects, a failure to take a hand in such a critical sector of its economy and society would mean passing up an opportunity that is there for the taking. Thank you.