Progress made on poverty elimination with launch of ‘Step’
Ahead of the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), a ‘Sustainable Tourism for the Elimination of Poverty’ initiative (Step) has been launched to link sustainable tourism with the elimination of poverty.
Supported by the World Tourism Organisation and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Step initiative was launched at the Conference on ‘Responsible Tourism in Destinations’ held in Cape Town last week.
According to Geoffrey Lipman, advisor to the World Tourism Organisation, the initiative will seek new funds, research sustainable tourism and the elimination of poverty linkages and create an operating framework that provides incentives for businesses to use the programme.
He said this mechanism intends to use imagination and action to reduce poverty, with one of the main components being fund raising. This will be achieved by looking towards the private sector.
Mr Lipman added that there is no intention to compete against other funding efforts. Instead, they will find new channels as it is believed that the key to this new funding will be to make companies view sustainable development in tourism as part of their social responsibility programme, whether they trade in computers, transport or hospitality.
Step will seek to build a capital base for two main reasons, namely research and operations. The research will strive to link sustainable development and poverty elimination by looking at causal factors. Sustainable operations will look at developing small and medium sized programmes in the world’s poorest countries, which will help to put the project into practice.
(Tina Meier-Carter)
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