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Difficulties
in Paradise: the Feasibility of Sustainable Development |
The World Tourism Organization (WTO) in a recent report entitled "Tourism: 2020 Vision" appraised the future of the WTO industry in the twenty first century. The report forecasted that about 1.5 billion tourists will visit foreign countries annually by the year 2020, spending approximately US$2 trillion per year or US$5 billion daily. This represents about three times more tourists than the 663 million tourists recorded in 1999. These figures are based on the average expected tourist arrivals growing to about 4.3% annum over the next two decades and receipts from international tourism increasing by 6.7% per annum. "Tourism: 2020 Vision" indicates that the industry will be the largest in the world.
The English-speaking Caribbean region, like other developing regions, is caught up in the tide of profound global changes. Unfortunately, the Caribbean region with its relatively moderate average rates of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of about 4% over the period 1990-1999, continues to depend on the export of a narrow range of primary commodities to Europe and the USA on special preferential trade arrangements. The WTO's ruling against the European Union banana import regime favoring the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and more recently the European Union's proposal to open its market to products from 50 of the world's Least Developed Countries (LDCs) adds serious constraints for Caribbean economies. These trends are likely to lead to an increased emphasis on the tourism industry. This tendency has already reopened a debate in the region on the role of tourism in economic growth and the importance of sustainable tourism in the overall development of the region. In the immediate short-term, the industry's market potential looks viable, but the potential rewards for the government and people are open to a range of questions in the medium to long-term period.
There are generally four principal approaches that have been applied to evaluating the impact of tourism in developing countries. These are:
The Economic Approach which views tourism as an engine of economic growth, particularly as a means of generating foreign exchange. A 1996 UN report evaluating the contribution of tourism to national income, gross levels of incomes or gross foreign exchange, found that net earnings after deductions were made for all necessary foreign exchange expenditures, of tourism were much more significant for the industry. This report found significant leakages associated with: (a) imports of materials and equipment for construction; (b) imports of consumer goods, particularly food and drinks; (c) repatriation of profits earned by foreign investors; (d) overseas promotional expenditures and (e) amortization of external debt incurred in the development of hotels and resorts. The impact of the leakages varied greatly across countries, depending on the structure of the economy and the tourism industry. From the data presented in this study on the Caribbean, St. Lucia had a foreign exchange leakage rate of 56% from its gross tourism receipts, Aruba had 41%, Antigua and Barbuda 25% and Jamaica 40%. This type of information is often used to estimate a number of tourism multipliers and their impact on the overall economy. The conventional view has been that the higher the leakage of direct tourist expenditures, the smaller the impact of the tourism income multiplier. Information on tourism income multipliers on the Caribbean is not available. However, with a large number of Caribbean countries' economic fortunes closely linked to the tourism industry other factors must also be considered.
The Private Sector Approach has been to focus on tourism exclusively as a commercial activity. Herein, the main concerns are product development, competitiveness and commercial returns. In the case of the Caribbean, the Secretariat of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) has identified a number of areas of action at the regional level, such as the maintenance of product quality, including the integrity of the natural environment, enhancement of profitability, the provision of air access at competitive rates from major tourist markets, the provision of a secure socio-economic environment for the industry by combating crime and drugs, strengthening inter-sectoral linkages and improving regional collaboration, particularly in the area of overseas marketing and promotion.
Many conservationists view tourism as a mechanism to enhance the sustainable use of nature resource use, and a way to enhance incentives for conservation. The World Bank 2000 study entitled "Tourism and the Environment In the Caribbean: An Economic Framework" in addition to outlining the links between tourism and the environment, proposed a number of ways in capturing economic rents from visitors and to restructure the existing system of taxation on the tourism sector in the region. However, given the fragmented structure of the Caribbean economy, policy-makers in the region will be required to restructure and build the existing institutional capacity to address such concerns in the medium to long-term.
Finally, there has been the emergence of a "livelihood" approach" that focuses on "people's participation". Over the past decade, sustainable development has been evolving as a populist notion in debates on development. The dominant definition has often been that proposed by the 1987 Brundtland Commission Report, which viewed sustainable development as if it meets the needs of the present generation without diminishing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This simple definition has many complex issues buried within it and has been used in a myriad of different ways. Nonetheless, in reviewing the concept of sustainability, there are two basic sets of issues that often arise, namely: the importance of intergenerational equity which refers to the principle that each generation should have a comparable opportunity to make a living and to meet their needs and the availability of choice to a broad range of different assets and capital.
Increasingly, attempts to capture these features in analyses, have viewed sustainability within a framework of changing choices and decision-making processes that place people and all participants at the center of the process. The key questions that arise are: Who benefits? Who loses? Who decides?, and How are decisions made and negotiated? There are a large number of models that have evolved to address these issues based on the particular nature of the livelihood and governmental strategies.
In the context of the Caribbean, for tourism to be sustainable a comprehensive framework is required to accommodate all four perspectives outlined above. This would require a focus of attention on: the quality of management, the environmental impacts of tourism activities, the impact of socio-economic factors and the role of the various promotion and monitoring agencies in fostering tourism activities.
The former Director of the University of the West Indies Centre for Environment and Development (UWICED), Professor Bishnodat Persaud, has indicated that one way to ensure sustainability in the Caribbean is to emphasize the positive cost-benefit outcomes in all economic activities. From this viewpoint, sustainability must be viewed from the overall picture, where environmental degradation may be inevitable in some pursuits but improvements may be possible in other areas. The all-encompassing test is what happens to the total value of all assets in a country. Sustainable development does not necessarily require sustainability in all sectors, since a country could continue to make economic progress while exhausting some resources. However, in small open economies with a narrow range of economic sectors such as primary product agriculture, foot loose manufacturing and mass tourism, it is especially vital to achieve sustainable development in all sectors. In the Caribbean, where tourism is highly dependent on the environment, sustainability depends not only on what happens in a particular sector, but also on what happens in the overall economy. In the region where agriculture and manufacturing are generally environmentally degrading, sustainable tourism would be a difficult task in spite of the efforts of policymakers in the tourist sector. Nonetheless, tourism like all the other sectors must be environmentally sensitive.
Essentially, the Caribbean is not yet fully degraded beyond repair. Environmental degradation is significant. But this is not as substantial as in other competing tourist destinations such as the Mediterranean. The Caribbean has become a major tourist destination not merely because of its favorable geographical location but just as important the attractiveness of its environmental assets. The Caribbean is blessed with its endowment of environmental assets and attractive tourism resources. These could help with the development of the region. However, the availability of these resources should not lead to any form of complacency. What is required in the Caribbean is a greater degree of decisiveness, transparency and effectiveness in the decision-making process and the management of its resources.
Garfield Barnwell is attached to the Guyana Mission to the United Nations.