The Transforming Tourism Initiative and SDG 8

1. SDGs, From goals to targets to indicators

2. SDG 8 and tourism

The SDGs are indivisible and should be implemented in an integrated manner, in other words all of them should be taken into account in the development of tourism. Nevertheless, tourism is also specifically addressed in SDGs 8, 12, 14. In this paper we will focus on SDG8: “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”. It addresses tourism directly in target 8.9: “By 2030, devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products” which has two indicators, 8.9.1: “Tourism direct GDP as a proportion of total GDP and in growth rate” and 8.9.2: Proportion of jobs in sustainable tourism industries out of total tourism jobs”.

SDG 8 combines the targets of economic growth and of decent work into one goal, as if they somehow are inherently linked. Where there (arguably) is a connection between economic growth and the creation of jobs, there is no automatic link between growth and the decency of jobs [1]. Integrating both targets into one SDG seems less a logical and more a discursive argument, suggesting growth will lead to decent work. This discursive character is illustrated by the SDG8 logo. The full negotiated and official text first deals with “growth”, prioritizing it over “full and productive employment” and only then the concept of “decent work” is introduced. The logo however, the highly visible representation and first (and often only) thing people see, foregrounds decent work by situating it prior to economic growth.

In this paper we will deal with four issues in SDG 8 that, in our opinion, from the perspective of NGOs committed to sustainable development and responsible tourism, should be addressed to establish justifiable indicators:

The issue of decent work has long been recognized as a priority by many, on national and international levels and including unions and intragovernmental bodies such as ILO, UNDP, UNEP and UNWTO. Although the importance of the concept itself is unanimously embraced, things become more challenging once the concept is being operationalized and priorities and urgencies being identified. From a tourism worker’s perspective, most NGOs fighting for worker’s rights agree on four developments that raise concern:

- Growing number of types of contracts that do not safeguard worker’s rights, often resulting from the growing phenomenon of sub-contracting.
- Increasing flexibilisation of jobs, resulting in unacceptable workloads and diffused job descriptions and tasks.
- Growing number of health issues
- Failure in addressing gender equality and gender violence

Although ILO and labor unions agree on the relevance of these issues and have brought them to the negotiation tables, there have been hardly any signs of positive developments on work floor level.

“It (SD) contains within it two key concepts:
- the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding
priority should be given; and
- the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the
environment's ability to meet present and future needs."

The Rio 92 conference that followed the report, and its Agenda 21, elaborated on this distinction in article 38.1 where it states that problems of environmental degradation should be addressed in the context of: “efforts to promote sustainable and environmentally sound development in all countries and that the promotion of economic growth in developing countries is essential”. Essentially Agenda21 makes two important distinctions here. The first one is between sustainable and environmentally sound development and the other between developed and developing countries. We will come back to the North-South distinction in one of the following paragraphs. Interesting for the development debate is the suggested difference between sustainable and environmentally sound. Where “environmentally sound” refers the second key concept of Brundtland’s definition “limitation”, “sustainable” would also encompass the first: “the essential needs of the world’s poor”, referencing and including an important social element from the development and justice debate: redistribution of income and reducing economic inequality. Further reference to a distinction between growth and development is found in paragraph 9.7. where the eradication of poverty is linked to sustained economic growth on the condition that this growth “should be coordinated with social and economic development in an integrated manner with a view to avoiding adverse impacts on the latter, taking into full account the legitimate priority needs of developing countries (UNCED 1992, para.9.7)

25 years later, in Agenda 2030 (United Nations General Assembly 2015a) the distinction between growth and development is less obvious. Although in its preamble, the Agenda sets ambitious goals in developmental concepts, it later turns into a much more rigorous advocacy of economic growth. The preamble outlines 5 goals for sustainable development:

- to end poverty and hunger everywhere;
- to combat inequalities within and among countries;
- to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies;
- to protect human rights and promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls;
- and to ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources.

Thus development is defined with one environmental goal and four in the social sphere referencing justice by relating to combatting inequalities, to the re-distributional aspects of development and to the North-South debate.

Not mentioned in the pre-amble, the concept of economic growth is introduced in paragraph 3, initially as a means to “create conditions for sustainable, inclusive and sustained economic growth, shared prosperity and decent work for all’ and from there on gains traction, reducing the 5 social and environmental goals to adjectives, connected seemingly randomly to the economic growth concept, as sustainable, sustained ii and/or inclusive [2]. Only inclusive seems to relate to the social justice and re-distributional aspects of development while Prosperity, another concept crucial for its distributional effects on growth, is never mentioned again. Eventually economic growth evolves from being a means to a full-fledged goal with a legitimacy of itself in SDG 8.

In the responsible tourism debate the relation between growth and development has been questioned by NGOs since the 1980s, when it started, focusing on issues of justice, redistribution, trickle down and North-South relations. In this paragraph we will not elaborate on these debates. We will focus on the issue of tourism and growth, which has been pushed to the forefront recently with the attention for overtourism [3]. Overtourism is not new and has been around since the concepts of Carrying Capacity and LAC found their roots in it decades ago. Where a most of the current debate focuses on mitigating policies, more critical approaches address structural issues such as the exponential growth of tourism, its relentless promotion by powerful interests and the relation between economic growth and tourism in general. A relating issue that should be seriously addressed is the question how growth through tourism is measured and calculated. Although “leakage” effects have always been recognized there is hardly any serious attempt to quantify them and to actually subtract them from tourism incomes before claiming the profits of tourism growth. An acknowledgement of this hiatus by tourism experts was surprisingly exposed when the Travel Foundation asked them if tourism income covered the costs and “they answered with a resounding “no”. All those around the table—academics and representatives from businesses and destinations—accepted that tourism isn’t paying its way” [4]. A complicating factor is that systems to measure tourism, like the UNWTO’s Tourism Satellite Accounting are often not adequate to measure real growth (illustrated by the misleading 1 billion tourist arrivals claim), let alone development. A serious debate on tourism, growth and development can only have meaning after these issues have been addressed.

3. SDGs and sustainable tourism indicators

4. UNWTO and Criteria

5. What role can Civil society play in the indicator debate?

Whatever path of participation is chosen, a sense of urgency is required. In 2020 the indicators will have to be established and from then on many conditions shaping the influence of Civil Society in content and in procedures will be laid down for the next decennium. If NGOs do not represent the interests of their constituencies in the process up to the finalization of the indicators, these interests will have a lesser change of being recognized, defended, supported and taken into consideration in evaluations of Agenda 2030.