The Pacific Destinations

Tourism as a development tool for Pacific Island economies

On, 13 September 2005 a representative group of government, industry, UN specialized agencies and civil society leaders met in New York, at the invitation of the World Tourism Organization in its capacity as Specialized Agency of the United Nations, on the eve of the Special United Nations General Assembly, and adopted the Declaration on Tourism and the Millennium Development Goals. http://www.world-tourism.org/sustainable/doc/decla-ny-mdg-en.pdf

Amongst other key issues, they noted the following – all of which are very relevant to the Pacific Islands and support the logic for the establishment of OSTA:

• The effective contribution of tourism to the achievement of several Millennium Development Goals, especially those relating to poverty alleviation, environmental conservation and creation of employment opportunities for women, indigenous communities and young people;
  
  The role that tourism plays in most developing, least developed and small island states, as the main - and sometimes the only - means of economic and social development on a sustainable basis, with meaningful linkages to other productive sectors, such as agriculture and handicrafts.

• That the increase in mobility is essential to achieve the goal of creating more jobs and eliminating poverty through tourism but that in recent years mobility has been limited by factors such as the lack of security and the rise in the price of fuel affecting air transport.

• Tourism has not yet been given sufficient recognition by many governments and international development assistance agencies, particularly in view of its enormous potential to generate economic, environmental and social benefits.

• The tourism sector can therefore make a substantially greater contribution to poverty alleviation, economic growth, sustainable development, environmental conservation, inter-cultural understanding and peace among nations,

• Fully recognize tourism, when sustainably developed and managed, as an effective tool to realize the Millennium Development Goals - especially poverty alleviation;

• Integrate tourism in national development programmes and poverty reduction strategies to contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals;

• Encourage good governance, ensuring that all stakeholders, especially at the local level, are duly consulted and responsibilities are clearly defined;

• Mobilize further domestic resources, in cooperation with financial institutions, micro credit entities, business service providers and encourage the further development of the local private sector to facilitate community driven tourism programmes, and small and medium size tourism enterprise programmes;

• Encourage large national and multinational companies operating in developing and least developed countries to act in the most sustainable manner, in the context of the tourism sector, adopting strong social responsibility measures towards local communities, and taking specific measures to increase the level of employment of poor people and the supply of goods and services by the poor;

The Pacific Plan & Tourism.

The goal of the current Pacific Plan is to enhance and stimulate economic growth, sustainable development, good governance, and security for Pacific countries through regionalism.
http://www.pacificplan.org/tiki-page.php?pageName=HomePage

The regional tourism organisation, South Pacific Tourism Organisation, www.southpacific.travel, has suggested target revenue for the region of US$2 billion p.a. by 2010 – and if this could be achieved, tourism would be the single largest contributor to ‘Pillar 1’ of the Pacific Plan. (http://www.spto.org/public/annual_reports/annualreport061.pdf)

Tourism is already a major contributor to the economies of the Pacific Islands – some 50% of GDP for the Cook Islands and Palau, and high in numerous other destinations such as Fiji and Vanuatu. (http://www.pacificplan.org/tiki-list_file_gallery.php?galleryId=11) It has significant potential to contribute more to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in the region.