Making tourism sustainable

Beauty lies in the eyes of beholder. Which is why Pakistani tourists to Gilgit-Baltistan and the KPK never send home pictures of colourful garbage sites that dot the valleys, streams, and glacial moraines in Pakistan’s mountain areas? Is it the price of development, or the price of photojournalism that has sent hordes of southern dwellers with the task of polluting the northern lands?

Now as luck would have it, the British Backpacker Society has declared Pakistan to be the world’s leading adventure travel destination, whereas The Financial Times travel section has also enlisted Pakistan’s mountains in its ‘where to go in 2018’ guide.

International tourists are a good thing, especially considering that European and American tourists are far more civilised than their equally educated Pakistani counterparts in so far as spewing garbage is concerned. But what also needed are international investments in the tourism sector along with implementation of superior standards of sustainable tourism that at least meet what’s implemented internationally.

According to a feature published by the Financial Time’s FDI Intelligence, a “growing number of countries only want foreign firms to invest in their tourism sectors if they make a strong commitment to sustainability.” But for that happen, Pakistan’s provincial governments would have to sit down with their relevant federal counterparts to draw out a policy to ensure ‘sustainable’ or ‘responsible’ tourism.

That policy should reflect, according to the UN World Tourism Organization, three key objectives: (a) protection of the natural environment; (b) conservation of the cultural heritage of host communities; and (c) advance local economy in a fair and far-sighted fashion. (See also BR Research column, Untapped potential, published Dec 19, 2017)

Even countries like Slovenia and Costa Rica - are working on sustainable tourism for years – which gives credence to the view that you don’t need to be a developed economy to do that. Being sustainable may be frivolous idea for developed world or the city dwellers, for the developing countries and especially those regions that rely on tourism such GB and KPK, and are fragile and more susceptible to shocks, sustainability is not a cute idea. It’s the only option they got. This is why some countries in fact have put a moratorium on hotel expansion to prevent deforestation and unsustainable development.

Lastly, while tourism is a provincial subject the federal government should work towards GI-tagging of natural, cultural and historical sites in the provinces, amongst other marketing and branding efforts. It should also work towards an annual provincial tourism index in Pakistan.

That index should compare tourism facilities within each province/territory along a wide range of criteria, and thereby help create pressure on the provincial governments through the media and the civil society to improve provincial tourism facilities. Islamabad need not take a donor funding for this exercise; it can give this task to a consortium of leading universities (one each from each province/territory) that can raise funding from corporations under their CSR programme.