UN conference highlights benefits of tourism for poorest nations

At the recently held Fourth United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC) in Istanbul, it was revealed that tourism is one of the top three sources of export earnings for almost half of the 48 poorest countries in the world.

Of the countries that currently comprise the LDC, 33 are located in Africa, 14 in Asia and one in the Caribbean and include such popular eco-tourism and adventure destinations as Cambodia, Ethiopia, Laos, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia.  In the year 2000, international tourist arrivals in the group of countries totalled 6 million people, whereas last year that figure had increased to 17 million. In the same period, revenue from tourism had increased from USD$3 billion to USD$10 billion.

Despite this considerable revenue for countries at most in need, the value of tourism has often been overlooked.

“In spite of tourism´s proven contribution to foreign exchange generation, job creation and socio-economic development, low priority has so far been assigned to the sector in the development agenda.” said United Nations World Trade Organization Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai. “This is particularly surprising given that tourism has been clearly identified by developing countries themselves as a priority for their economic advancement.”

At the Special Event on Tourism for Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction held during the LDC conference, 15 Ministers of Tourism, various UN agencies and donor countries discussed ways in which tourism can be grown and better managed and highlighted four pillars to future development: building good governance and sustainability in tourism; promoting investment in the tourism economy; fostering the poverty reduction impact of tourism; and encouraging human resources development.

The gathering was the first public appearance of the United Nations Steering Committee on Tourism for Development.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 6th, 2011 at 3:00 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.