Conflicts, pandemic, climate change, overtourism, sustainability, biodiversity and ecotourism, recognition by the international community: the seven major challenges facing tourism today
By Francesco Frangialli, Honorary Secretary-General of the United Nations World Tourism Organization
The purpose of this text is to address the seven major challenges that from my point of view world tourism is facing today, starting with the sad international news of the moment.
Until October, two simultaneous wars have been raging, which, although being geographically distant, influence each other. And this, not counting the various international or domestic sources of tensions. For the first time since 1945, war has returned to Europe, impacting global tourism significantly as Europe remains the leading continent for both domestic and international tourism exchanges.
Yet, global tourism is thriving. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimates that in 2024 international tourism arrivals have reached 1,470 billion, exactly the level of the 2019 level before the Covid crisis. In short, we have lost five years in the growth of international tourist arrivals. The increase should be of some five per cent in 2025. The growth in financial flows -revenues and expenditures- is even more marked than the movements of people.
According to IATA, with 4,9 billion passengers, global air transport has overpassed by 3,8 per cent in 2024 the 2019 peak level. The occupancy rate of the seats has reached 83,5 per cent. A surge of the traffic of 8 per cent is expected in 2025.The pandemic claimed 17 million lives, but tourism is still alive!
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A region of the world is particularly suffering from war: Middle East, since the horrific events of October 7, 2023, and the tragedy which followed. Even if the fighting has stopped, the result of 2025 is impacted by what has happened in the Gaza strip.
However, the region’s tourism is also doing well: In 2024, arrivals to the region have reached 95 million, exceeding those of 2019 by 32 per cent. Surprisingly, Middle East is the part of the world where tourism rebounded the quickest after the end of the pandemic.
What is this due to? Mainly to the fact that the major destinations are not directly impacted.
Israel, the Palestinian territories, neighboring Jordan, and Lebanon are at the eye of the storm; tourism activity is naturally halted, adding to the suffering of their populations. Yemen and Syria remain embroiled in their never-ending internal conflicts.
But the great destinations belong to another world. Egypt, once a frequent victim of terrorism, now operates on a logic not of peace or war, but on one resulting from its exceptional cultural heritage. Fueled by significant archaeological discoveries, the growth in tourist arrivals remain strong. Pilgrimages continue unabated to Saudi Arabia, which, like Egypt but for a different reason, benefits from a captive market.
Economic activity remains high in the Gulf, where oil exports are hardly affected by ongoing conflicts; far from the epicenter of the earthquake, Dubai continues to magnetize visitors and remains a favored destination. The UAE are Qatar are booming.
We can cautiously draw an initial conclusion from this situation: tourism may overreact to an external shock, such as a terrorist act, especially if it is heavily publicized. However, except for a region directly victim of an open conflict, tourism proves to be relatively immune to international tensions unless it is directly involved.
I shall stop here with this first challenge. It shows that in the period we are living, the factors explaining the growth of global tourism, as well as the reasons behind its disruptions, are not unidimensional.
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We have come to a first conclusion: the holistic geopolitical explanation that might help us understand what is happening before our eyes lies elsewhere than in international tensions.
First, let’s look at the COVID epidemic from 2020 to 2022, the most violent shock in the history of international tourism, even more brutal than the 2008 subprime crisis.
Between 2019 and 2020, international tourist arrivals plunged by around 72%, with both developed and emerging countries seeing declines of the same magnitude. Foreign exchange earnings for countries collapsed by similar proportions. 2021 was a year of stagnation, and it wasn’t until 2022 that tourism and air transport businesses began to recover significantly. This unprecedented COVID crisis calls for five key remarks.
Firstly, while the epidemic halted tourism activity, it did not annihilate it. Activity resumed after two years. The desire to travel did not disappear; on the contrary, it became more intense. The financial savings accumulated during this period were dedicated to travel and relaxation and were used as soon as people could.
History, since the advent of tourism statistics, shows that after every major crisis, international tourism experienced a rebound, as sharp as the dip that preceded it. Every time, it returned to its growth trajectory, which has, and will again, be its long-term trend. This is happening one more time.
Secondly, like SARS, tourism was both a vector and a victim of the disease. This is typical of a globalized society, where phenomena such as epidemics, climate change, major pollutions, migrations, terrorism, ignore borders. How can we prevent a highly pathogenic virus from leaving its epicenter and spreading when more than a quarter of humanity moves from one country to another every year?
Thirdly, the almost biblical catastrophe of COVID was therefore exceptional. However, no epidemiologist will dare claim that, whether through an H5N1 avian flu mutation that would have become human-to-human transmissible, the resurgence of one of the sinister Ebola or Marburg hemorrhagic fevers, the spread of the new monkeypox, or some other nasty surprise coming from a forest in Congo or a farm in Guangdong, it won’t happen again. And perhaps even more terrifyingly.
Fourthly, let’s make an essential observation: for tourism a health crisis has many points in common with an economic depression, such as the subprime crisis. When activity stops, when households’ income dries up, when unemployment rises, people become cautious and limit their travel. But with a pandemic, it’s worse—the scale is different since the direct economic impact is present in the same way, but it is compounded by the lockdown and other drastic and blind constraints imposed by governments to prevent the spread of the infection. I am sure that each of you remembers what was his or her life during the Covid.
How can you travel when planes are grounded, roads are blocked, and enormous cruise ships threaten to become floating coffins? How can you live comfortably and relax when hotels, bars, clubs, restaurants, ski lifts, marinas, amusement parks, and most shops are closed?
From that consideration comes a final observation: in the face of the epidemic, the different segments of the tourism industry have not all been affected in the same way. Some suffered more than others: air transport, cruises, skiing and winter sports, business tourism, fairs and exhibitions. Conferences were replaced by online discussions.
Other sectors, on the contrary, withstood and, to some extent, benefited from the crisis: rural tourism, mid-altitude mountain tourism, ecotourism, outdoor sports, and local leisure activities. Many believed that choosing these sectors was a way to stay protected— both people trying to avoid contamination and, symmetrically, tourism industry players selecting activities less vulnerable to external shocks.
In response to the epidemic, domestic tourism was often, and logically, preferred over international tourism. It is, to some extent, likely to remain so, driven by the growing conviction that we must save energy and reduce emissions, and by the sharp rise in the cost of air travel which penalizes long-distance destinations.
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Tourism industry stakeholders face now a critical question: is the shift in behavior temporary, or are we witnessing a long-term change in how people balance leisure and work? For the so-called digital nomads, remote work has become a reality, even while traveling. We are facing a reversal of values, fundamentally altering our relationship to both tourism and leisure. Temporary or lasting? Probably a bit of both, depending on the destinations and the products involved.
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Thus, by analyzing the crisis we’ve lived through, we are approaching the sought-after explanation.
In the face of a major crisis like this, it’s clear that tourism is best protected when it is diversified in its products and markets, when it respects the environment where it operates, when it knows how to conserve a more expensive energy. In summary, when it’s flexible in adapting to circumstances, but always gentle, measured, and responsible in the forms it takes. In short, when it is sustainable.
You, the Chinese have a word—weiji—to describe a crisis. It’s made up of two characters: one meaning disaster, the other one meaning opportunity. The COVID crisis was a disaster for global tourism; but it offers an opportunity to rebuild it better. As António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, said in 2020: “It is imperative that we rebuild tourism in a safe, fair, and climate-respectful way.”
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Let’s focus on what, in my view, constitutes the heart of the sustainability issue for the tourism industry—the factor that outweighs all others: the warming of our planet.
Tourism, including air transport, is both affected by and contributes to climate change which represents four to five percent of the greenhouse gas emissions.
One year ago, in Baku, the COP29 (Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) took stock of a planet where both air and ocean temperatures are rising in an increasingly uncontrollable manner. The results of the meeting were not impressive: developing countries failed to obtain the substantial financial commitments they demanded from the wealthier nations.
Many governments show their intentions to increase their carbon emissions. The newly elected President of the United States aims to “protect the American car industry from the green scam”; he wants to revive drilling and massively deploy hydraulic fracturing. India continues to aggressively build coal-fired power plants, which already account for a third of its CO2 emissions. Let’s not remind Saudi Arabia and others that one year before, COP28 in Dubai called for “a fair, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels” … This wisdom seems to have been forgotten.
It is too soon to draw conclusions from the COP 30 which is underway in Belem, Brazil. But it is very likely that this grim picture will change much.
According to the European Copernicus Observatory, the global surface temperature in 2024 exceeded the pre-industrial average of 1850- 1900 by 1.6 degrees Celsius. The phenomenon is accelerating, as demonstrated by the sixth International Panel on climate Change (IPCC) report. No one believes in the Paris Agreement’s goal anymore: keeping the warming below 2 degrees, and preferably at 1.5. The UN’s new forecast is 3.1 degrees. The temperature of the oceans is half a degree higher than the 1991-2020 average.
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Climate change affects all sectors of the tourism industry, but not in the same proportions or ways.
Let’s talk first of tourism in coastal areas. It is a victim of rising sea levels, which result from the melting of the Greenland and Arctic ice sheets, while even Antarctica is starting to feel the effects of unusual temperatures. An iconic destination like Venice regularly sees St. Mark’s Square submerged by the waters of its lagoon. The Serenissima is becoming less and less so.
At the opposite end of the globe, another major tourist attraction is also suffering: the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. Home to the world’s largest ecosystem, it has already seen 80% of its coral affected by bleaching caused by rising temperatures and acidification of waters. When coral reefs bleach before dying, an entire extraordinary marine fauna disappears. The magic of diving fades; a world without colors is not a world we are keen to discover.
Rising sea levels and warming oceans are also increasing the intensity of hurricanes and storms. The El Niño phenomenon is intensifying. From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean and the Eastern Pacific, cyclones indiscriminately sweep away homes, hotels, and beaches, as we’ve recently seen in Florida, the Philippines, Mayotte island, and Valencia in Spain. The hardest one historically has been the cyclone Melissa which hit various islands of the Caribbean end of October this year. Such extreme events can be disastrous for the tourism industry: New Orleans, which economy depends on leisure and conferences, is just now recovering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the most violent hurricane ever to hit the USA.
Extreme temperatures, dried-up vegetation, violent winds, and uncontrolled wildfires periodically sweep across Greece, Canada, Australia, and Siberia. Los Angeles burned in January, and the 2028 Olympic Games will suffer as a result. France and Spain suffered a lot this summer. Even the Amazon rainforest is being devoured on all sides by tens of thousands of fires, ceasing to be the planet’s primary carbon sink. It lost an area equivalent to the one of Italy in 2024. Indonesian rainforests are shrinking even faster.
Indigeneous people of the nearby tropical forest have been flocking to Belem during the time of the COP 3O to explain how their life has been deteriorated.
But the worst may be for the small coral islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, like the Maldives, where tourism is the main economic resource. Their populations live at sea level; their very existence is at risk. One can understand the injustice felt by the inhabitants, given that these poor communities contribute nothing to emissions.
For example, 80 per cent of the Maldives territory is situated less than one meter above sea level so that a rise of 20 to 30 centimeters would have destructive effects. Erosion is already accelerating, taking away the sand from the beaches. The UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC predicts) that the islands will be gone by 2100. What a waste when the Maldives have reached two million visitors in 2024! Thanks to tourism, the archipelago has managed to escape from the list of the 45 least developed countries.
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Particular attention must be paid to the changing climate in mountain tourist areas.
As both the IPCC and UNESCO have pointed out, climate change is more pronounced in mountains and polar regions than anywhere else. Warming means less frost and snow in winter, and less predictable weather. It means landslides, falling rocks, and icefalls that t await climbers and hikers; it means the exhaustion of water resources, the sudden draining of glacial lakes, and landslides threatening villages downstream. Warming leads to the moving of the upper limit of the forest, the transformation of the landscapes, and the retreat of a very specific biodiversity.
The powerful winter sports industry is, of course, the first to feel the impact of rising temperatures. It is suffering from the retreat of the snow cover, its increasingly uncertain presence at medium altitudes, and the shortening of the ski season. But alpine skiing and its 150 million practitioners are not alone in keeping up with the warming: to varying degrees, all forms of mountain tourism are feeling the impact of climate change. From the Alps to the Caucasus, from the Andes to the Rockies and the Himalayas, the mountains are getting too warm, and the concerns of mountaineers are the same.
The mountains are not to become necessarily less attractive; their landscapes will still be magnificent. People will still admire the silhouette of the Atlas Mountains from the palm groves of Marrakech, but some winters, the snow will no longer covers its peaks. By 2050, Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, will have changed its face when the glaciers have disappeared from its summit. The mountains will remain just as welcoming, but they will look different.
Moreover, climate change is not the only factor affecting the lives of mountain communities that depend on tourism. Other factors are at play. The clientele is changing, visitor behavior is evolving, and the quest for health and well-being associated with altitude is increasingly shared. Visitor numbers are rising—sometimes excessively.
From my beloved Mont-Blanc to the imposing Everest, from the stunning Table Mountain in Cape Town to Fuji-Yama and the misty peaks of Mount Huangshan, overtourism has become the enemy of the most prestigious summits of our mountains. Everywhere, overtourism, in its various forms, has become the opposite of sustainability.
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The excessive visitation of remarkable places is by no means limited to the mountains. Let’s look at the islands and archipelagos where space is limited. Porquerolles, Skye, Mykonos, Ibiza, Lanzarote, the Lofoten Islands, Easter Island, the Galapagos, Hawaii—all are on the brink of asphyxiation. Phuket as well, which welcomed 13 million tourists in 2024, a third of Thailand’s total. Will Santorini face a disaster coming from the presence of 3 million visitors or one from a volcanic eruption such as the Aegean Sea collapse in 1610 BC? The excessive number of visitors is affecting major natural sites, such as, in the United States, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, and the Smoky Mountains.
Overtourism exerts unbearable pressure on iconic monuments and museums, such as, in Italy, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Pompeii, the Vatican Museums and the Spanish Steps in Rome, Saint Mark’s Square in Venice, and the famous “Lover’s Lane” of the Cinque Terre. Elsewhere in the world, spectacular cultural sites such as the Forbidden City in Beijing, Machu Picchu, Borobudur, Angkor, Petra, Abu Simbel, the Parthenon, the Blue Mosque, and Hagia Sophia are mere shadows of what they used to be.
Look at Egypt! The magnificent Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, just out of the Middle Ages, suffers from unbearable pressure, boosted by the proximity of the powerful tourist hub of Sharm El Sheikh. But there is still some good news. The Grand Egyptian Museum, located in Giza, has come to the rescue of the chaotic old Cairo Museum, which was overwhelmed by the number of visitors and unable to display some of its most beautiful treasures!
And not referring here to the peak frequentation of these places. Try accessing the Sambadrome in Rio on a Carnival night, Moscow Red Square on the first of May, the Great Wall of China during Spring Festival week, or Mont Saint-Michel on a busy weekend!
Overcrowding causes congestion in the streets of cultural cities, especially but not exclusively European: Venice, already mentioned, Bruges, Berlin, Barcelona, Lisbon, Prague, Krakow, Lucerne, Dubrovnik… The list is not exhaustive. For certain cities, the pressure is at a maximum. How can the 55,000 residents of Venice’s historic center continue to host 22 million visitors? Or the 1.7 million inhabitants of Barcelona receive 12 million visitors? Or the 1.5 million of Kyoto see 50 million passing through?
The quality of services provided to visitors suffers. Residents of neighborhoods previously ignored by tourists complain about the noise from late-night arrivals in their rental apartments. They suffer from the invasive presence of others drinking (often drinking too much and noisily, that’s the point!) at the base of their building. At the entrances to museums and monuments, lines stretch longer.
In the narrow streets of historic neighborhoods, pedestrian movement becomes difficult. Popular with tourists, rental bikes are left abandoned on sidewalks. Coaches transporting elderly and mobility- impaired tourists cannot access main attractions or park there. In restaurants, table service is under pressure from impatient clients, which deteriorates the experience, as it does for the kitchen work, albeit less visibly.
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Reactions to overtourism can be seen everywhere. “Tourists go home!” one reads on the walls of some cities: this scourge of modern tourism has, in turn, provoked a reaction from exasperated locals. Often, the protesters are the same people who once lived off tourism and encouraged its growth. Others, who rent their apartments when they go on vacation, complain that there are too many people when they return.
As the French author Jean Mistler wittily writes: “Tourism is the industry that involves transporting people who would be better off at home to places that would be better off without them.”
Excesses lead to measures that limit or even ban rentals like those on Airbnb, as seen in Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, and in many other cities. In 2024, Spain recorded a record 98 million international arrivals, and its government has taken at the national level severe tax measures to limit the purchase and rental of tourist accommodations by foreign residents. Quota systems or advance reservations are also being implemented, along with tolls for city-center access, such as in London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Venice, and even New York, or for entering monuments. Will it soon be necessary to subscribe to a required quest to enter the two towers of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, which reopened its divine doors in December, as is already the case for Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, Milan’s Duomo, the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, and the Great Mosque of Casablanca?
This phenomenon of rejection also applies to the enormous cruise ships that pollute more than they enrich. The city of Nice has recently banned stops for those carrying more than 900 passengers as the one of Venice has done since 2021 for those of more than 25 000 tons.
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The World Tourism Organization defines overtourism by the irritation it causes among host communities, but also among visitors themselves, who perceive it as a nuisance. The criterion is interesting but insufficient, as this issue equally affects natural or cultural sites that are inhabited. For these, overtourism can be defined by the excessive number of visits -especially at certain times of the year- relative to the site’s carrying capacity (if this can be established).
I suggest the idea that overtourism lies at the intersection of two phenomena: the increase in short stays and the excessive media coverage of certain destinations in a world where communication rules prevail.
The multiplication of long weekends or short breaks, replacing the traditional long holidays, is a well-established trend, especially in post- industrialized Western European societies. The gradual decline in the cost of air travel, the increase in connections provided by low-cost airlines, along with changes in lifestyles and consumption habits, the emergence of urban tourism, all contribute to the phenomenon. The development of tourism among seniors, who are free from constraints related to school calendars due to the aging population in major emitting countries, plays a significant role in this trend. This is especially important in a country such as China.
The increase in the number of departures reduces their seasonality and the excessive dominance of summer vacations. This isartificial very positive. However, this seemingly favorable trend is mitigated by the excessive focus placed on certain short stays. A glaring example of this new kind of imbalance is the concentration of Chinese holidays around three weeks of the year—the Chinese New Year, for which 9 billion trips have been registered in 2025, National Day, and the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Another striking example is the importance that Americans give to the long Thanksgiving weekend. In Italy, the whole country is at the beach on August 15th—Ferragosto. The result is a congestion in the transportation systems, an increased pressure on the environment and the monuments, and the neglect of ecotourism. Ultimately, a less sustainable tourism.
You can’t do or see everything you would like in just a few days. Visitors going to Prague will limit themselves to this marvelous city, overlooking the rich cultural treasures of the nearby Bohemian countryside. Those heading to Madrid will likely ignore the medieval cities of Toledo and Segovia, the austere monastery of El Escorial, the delicate Aranjuez palace-garden, and the royal site of La Granja with its castle and park.
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As I mentioned before, this first phenomenon of the multiplication of trips, which have become both easier and shorter, intersects with another: the immediate and massive flow of information in a globalized society. Through the media, the internet, and social networks, tourist- consumers know what the world can offer. They zap through their screens, and they can easily make their choice among the places they would like to visit; but this all depends on how these destinations are presented, highlighted, and publicized.
After the first revolution which followed the emergence of e-tourism, a second one is rapidly coming with the earthquake resulting from the use of artificial intelligence. It already concernsAbbey the tourism industry by many aspects, the first one being the leverage provided to the consumers in the way they plan, book, and live their travel experiences.
AI or not, many of the potential travelers wish to stay only briefly in the place they have selected. Enlarging their experience or boosting their understanding of the world are not their purpose. Just a souvenir, a post-card or a photo may be enough for them. As a consequence, as several other museums whether in totality or partially, the Prado in Madrid has forbidden to its 3,5 million visitors to take photos of its collections.
At the end of the day, the knowledge of the variety of the possible options and the constraint of a short stay collide. The travelers who want to travel often will limit their ambitions. Their choice will inevitably fall on the most well-known destinations and attractions, the ones enshrined in the media. As a result, they will overlook others.
International tourists often aim to maximize the number of countries they can discover in a single trip. First-time travelers from China may embark on a one-week group tour covering two or more European nations, but only experiencing a brief glimpse of each. They will discover Florence only through the Gucci megastore and the Michelangelo’s David statue (not realizing that the one in front Palazzo Vecchio is a copy) ; they will know London only through Harrods and Westminster Abbey (the latter seen from the exterior as they prioritize 19shopping) ; they will explore Paris only through the Galeries Lafayette and the Mona Lisa at the Louvre (which they didn’t really look at, too busy snapping selfies while other visitors are trying to capture her mysterious smile).
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What is called sometimes Instagram tourism or selfie tourism is a phenomenon by which an area sees an increase in tourism due to the exposure on social media and the resulting desire created among travelers to recreate the images they have seen on Instagram or Tik Tok. In others words “people coming to get a photo of the photos they have seen”.
But the reality may be far from the image brought by Instagram. The 6,5 million visitors coming to Bali because of its paradisiac image, made of a harmonious combination of pristine nature and harmonious Hinduism culture, discover a realty very different from their expectations: rubbish covering beaches or surrounding restaurants, cacophony of construction and poor land management, heavy traffic jams.
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Often, in their selection process, the ones deciding on their destination will base their choice on the presence of a cultural, natural, or mixed site listed on the prestigious World Heritage list, which was created by the 1972 UNESCO Convention.
If, by some extraordinary chance, a visitor from faraway Asia devotes an entire week to Italy, how can he or she possibly discover each of the 60 properties listed there by UNESCO ? Similarly, like Marco Polo dazzled by the treasures of China in his Book of Wonders, the European tourist visiting the Middle Kingdom will struggle to select between its 40 cultural sites, 16 natural sites, and four famous mountains offering both types of attractions.
The existence of sites recognized by UNESCO is a double-edged sword. Since it draws attention to the value of a property, the list encourages maintenance and preservation. Conversely, it leads to overcrowding, altering the visitors experience and sometimes fostering the degradation of the site. At the same time, tourists will ignore other places even more remarkable. The fame that guides the choices of those about to depart can, in some cases, take strange turns. Chinese tourists, to admire the lavender fields, appreciate their fragrance and take photos, crowd into the lavender fields of the Valensole plateau in Provence, made famous by a well-known TV series in China. Even more surprising is the example of the Swiss village of Iseltwald, with its 400 residents, made popular by a South Korean Netflix series. To prevent the peaceful visitors from the land of the Morning Calm from staying too long, the local town hall has imposed a 5 Swiss francs tax for taking a selfie on a pier on Lake Brienz, where some romantic scenes were filmed. Now we know where the gold resting in Swiss vaults comes from, but all of this is far from sustainable tourism.
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The issue of sustainability in tourism is a huge undertaking for an industry that has become globalized. Let’s be more precise: with the often-overused word “sustainability” and the expression “sustainable tourism” plastered everywhere to the point of becoming a cliché, what exactly are we talking about?
It all started in 1987 with a report which produced intellectual consequences that no one had expected. But not just any report, the one commissioned by the United Nations, from a committee chaired by former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, entitled Our Common Future.
In the Brundtland report, we find the essential definition, the starting point for the journey that would follow: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
This concept includes the idea that development must respect what John Elkington would later call “the three bottom lines,” the triple social, environmental, and economic responsibility—or the 3Ps: “people, planet, and profit.” With the notion of sustainability, the focus is placed on social justice and the fight against poverty. Equal attention is given to the environment, to the fight against pollution, and to the dual risks of climate change and loss of biodiversity. But the approach does not neglect, far from it, economic growth—the profit that businesses must generate and without which nothing is possible.
Sustainability must be pursued both globally and locally, one driving the other. This is the principle: “Think global, act local!”.
Let’s not make a mistake: sustainable development is primarily a principle… of development. Contrary to what some ecological extremists would make us believe, it is far from a strategy of decreasing or decay.
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The Brundtland report became the intellectual foundation of the Earth Summit, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. There, the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21, the Climate Framework Convention (which would later be extended by the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols), and the Convention on Biological Diversity, which introduced the “precautionary principle”, were adopted. A true festival !
The Summit gave rise to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In the wake of this extraordinary event, the Convention to Combat Desertification was adopted in 1994, applying the sustainable development concept to arid lands. A large portion of the territory of a major tourist country like Morocco is concerned, and it is not the only case. A large part of China is also desertic, including the regions of the ancient Silk Road with a rich tourism potential.
The three phenomena—global warming, biodiversity loss, and the expansion of deserts and arid zones—interact in complex ways that go beyond the scope of this presentation. However, it is certain that climate change is the matrix of all of these. All three have a proven and generally negative impact on the tourism activity.
This is the case with biodiversity, whose existence is at the heart of many tourism products. In addition to climate change, it is threatened by accelerated deforestation, uncontrolled urbanization, intensive agriculture, overhunting and overfishing, various types of pollution, and the presence of invasive alien species can also contribute to it. The urgency is palpable: one million species, out of the 8 million (plants and animals) on the planet, are threatened by a possible extinction.
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The meaning underlying the English words sustain, sustainable, and sustainability is double: the idea of a necessary developmental effort to meet both current and future human needs, and the conviction that this effort only makes sense if it takes place in the long-term. Included in the concept of sustainability is the notion of resilience.
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Within the UN System, tourism hopped on the bandwagon of history in a search for a better world. It wasn’t until the turn of the Millenium that tourism became involved in the United Nations system’s commitment to develop in a sustainable manner.
In 1992, tourism was notably absent from the Rio Earth Summit, I have already mentioned. Consequently, it wasn’t included in the eight Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000, which ran until 2015, with the first target being to halve the proportion of the global population living on less than a dollar a day between 1990 and 2015. A goal that was indeed met.
However, among world leaders—governments, the United Nations family of organizations, and Bretton Woods institutions—something was changing, as the growth of tourism flows was obvious and making its impact felt in countries where it had been least expected.
The UNWTO rode this wave. In 2002, it organized the first Global Ecotourism Summit in Quebec, in collaboration with the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). That same year, the UN held its new Summit in Johannesburg, ten years after the Rio summit (“Rio + 10”). It was a turning point. The UNWTO made sure tourism was included, especially for African countries, in the action plan which was adopted. Following this inflection, the Organization launched its STEP initiative—Sustainable Tourism for Eliminating Poverty. That episode in South Africa was a great moment of enthusiasm for me: a milestone -without a doubt, one of great significance- had been reached!
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Let’s pause for a moment to focus on the emphasis placed at that time on ecotourism, as 2002 had been declared the “International Year of Ecotourism” by the United Nations. The concept was not as familiar then as it is today. Ecotourism is now defined as “a form of sustainable tourism focused on nature, where the main motivation is the visit to untouched or minimally disturbed natural areas, with the goal of admiring or studying the landscape, flora, fauna, or participating in traditional cultural events found in these areas.”
Ecotourism is about visiting without damaging the integrity of the natural environment: “Take only photos, leave only footprints,” is the guiding principle. The conclusion of the Quebec Summit was clear: ecotourism is a form of sustainable tourism, the most demanding one, but the two concepts are not identical.
The practice of ecotourism is a perfect illustration of the existence of a Keynesian multiplier in tourism activity, which, based on its cross- sectoral nature, establishes that the impact of an initial tourism expenditure is greater the fewer the “leaks” in the system. This is the case when the operators are local SMEs, and when visitor expenditures are directed towards services and goods (agricultural products, crafts) that come from the host community.
For instance, a stay at a rural guesthouse, a bed and breakfast, or a farm inn can generate, for a lower price point, greater positive economic and social returns for the community than a stay at a top-luxury hotel. Ecotourism, like rural tourism involves the consumption of local products and the minimization of resulting waste. Short circuits and the circular economy, as we strangely call it today.
Sustainable tourism, ecotourism, nature and discovery tourism, rural tourism, village tourism, community- based tourism, or even slow tourism for the more pretentious, the concepts interlock with one another. All have in common the goal of making tourism more responsible and resilient. Resilient, meaning resistant. We’ve seen it: resistant to two brutal wars and a terrifying pandemic. Ecotourism, I’ll come back to it, should only have limited negative impacts on the natural and sociocultural environment.
Here, let’s take the counterexample of the large cruise ships that now invade not only the coasts of Alaska and Norway but also the southern polar regions, some of them in violation of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Their purpose is supposedly to observe the landscapes and terrestrial and marine wildlife. Yet, on the reality, they often harm the latter and contribute to the acceleration of climate change, which is already frighteningly present in these areas.
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As the UNWTO emphasizes, ecotourism promotes the protection of natural areas that support ecotourism activities, such as the national parks of East and Southern Africa.
Whether it’s with the mighty elephants of Thailand or Sri Lanka, the sleek white dolphins of the Mekong in Kratié, Cambodia, or the exquisite giant pandas of China, whose survival has been preserved thanks to research centers like the one in Chengdu, Sichuan, the presence of ecotourism brings resources -especially fiscal ones- that allow endangered wildlife to be saved. Finding the right balance between a high frequentation level that enriches and an excessive influx that disturbs and destroys is often difficult.
Let’s illustrate this with a particularly relevant example: the Galapagos Islands, 1,000 kilometers off the coast of Ecuador. By allowing 100,000 tourists each year, the Galapagos Islands put at risk a unique wildlife, including giant tortoises, land and marine iguanas, penguins, and albatrosses. To limit visitation and reduce the damage caused by excessive and poorly calibrated tourism, the Ecuadorian government recently raised the entry fee for foreign tourists to the national park.
Moreover, by its presence, ecotourism acts as a game changer: it raises awareness among both local inhabitants and tourists about the necessity of preserving natural capital. When governments themselves are convinced of this, the best future becomes possible, as demonstrated by Costa Rica, which, preferring forest rangers to soldiers, abolished its army.
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The recognition of tourism’s place within the international community came in the early days of 2004. Encouraged by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, it consisted of the transformation of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), created in 1975, into a “specialized agency”— the expression meaning a full-fledged member of the United Nations System.
I take pride in having initiated this effort and in having driven it through to completion through a cooperation agreement -an international treaty- unanimously approved by both the UNWTO and the UN General Assemblies.
The next step, to which I also contributed, was the inclusion of tourism in the UN agenda on climate change at COP 13 in Bali in 2007. This was followed by the UNWTO’s active participation in the 2012 “Rio+20” World Summit and the appearance of tourism in three of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs—Goals 8, 12, and 14), which, starting in 2015, replaced the ancient Millennium Development Goals and will, we hope, guide the international community until 2030.
The Organization has to play “the decisive and central role in global tourism” that the United Nations recognized to it in 2004 with Article 1 of resolution 58/232 of its General Assembly.
1992–2022: The endeavor lasted 30 years; the road was long, often winding, sometimes strewn with obstacles, but since the effort was not slackened, it led us to our goal.
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To conclude, let sustainability, the major of the various challenges that tourism today is facing, come before all other considerations of immediate profit, which breed inequities. “Never sacrifice the future for the present,” said French Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France.
Let us fully commit ourselves to tireless genuinely pursuit sustainable and responsible development —a kind of development which is truly maintainable over time.
Let sustainability take precedence over the ease of unchecked growth driven by force, which leads to unbearable pollution, reckless use of land, and unsustainable consumption of natural resources.
Let us not accept the false shortcuts. Let us not settle for greenwashing or lip service! Sustainable development is the new paradigm of the 21st century. It is both an imperative and an opportunity for tourism. It is a noble cause. It is a rewarding fighting.
Copyright Institute of Tourism
