Sustainable Tourism the Next Right Step for Kerala

“To make Kerala, the God’s Own Country, an up-market high quality tourist destination through rational utilisation of resources with focus on integrated development of infrastructure sector, conserving and preserving the heritage and environment and enhancing productivity, income, creating employment opportunities, alleviating poverty thereby making tourism the most important sector for the socio-economic development and environment protection of the State.” Tourism Vision Statement, Kerala Tourism

Though our vision statement is not mentioning about Sustainable Development (SD) explicitly, the implied meaning can be found from the phrases such as ‘rational utilisation of resources’, ‘conserving and preserving the heritage and environment’ and ‘alleviating poverty’.
Apart from the vision statement, one of the objectives mentioned in the Kerala Tourism Vision policy 2025 is to promote sustainable and eco-friendly tourism in the State based on the carrying capacity of the destinations along with steps to conserve and preserve the art, culture and heritage of the State.

There is a general perception that SD concepts will work against a society’s economic growth and will reduce international competence. In absolute terms it may be true based on the present day calculation of GDP and other economic indicators, which are not considering environmental and social aspects of development. But when more and more economists are accepting the ‘money value’ of environment and culture, they are struggling to come out with consensus in selecting the time factor (discounting) and items in indicators. Anyway, the works of environmental/ ecological economists resulted in much stringent policies in rules, especially in EU countries. Tourism being the largest industry in the world can contribute significantly in this area.

It is not true that sustainable tourism or eco tourism can be implemented only in the natural reserve parks (forests/coral reef/lakes). The concept can be implemented by every segment in the industry – hotels/resorts, tour operators, air lines, air ports, cruise lines, tour guides, etc.
After the Earth Summit at Rio, there had been many movements to convert tourism industry to Green paths. Internationally, certifications like ISO 14000, Ecotel and Green Globe 21 came into existence. Climate Change, Biodiversity Conservation, Shortage of Drinking Water and Power (electricity), Accumulation of Domestic and Industrial Waste, Local Employment generation and promotion of Local goods and services are addressed while considering SD in any industry. It can be seen that while addressing the above, it will invariably result in better profitability by reduced revenue expenditures.

Malabar House and Fortcochin received the first GG21 Certification in India in the year 2005. More than the international branding benefits on marketing of the property, the management was interested in the certification process to find ways of reducing cost of operation. Such certifications also will support a strong candidature for domestic or international tourism awards as well.
Individual nations tried their own ways of promoting green brands such as Green Dragon (Wales), ECO Tourism (Australia) etc. State / regional governments which are predominantly depending on tourism industry also started promoting their own standards, certifications and brands.
It is also interesting to note that China – long considered as an environmental threat to the world – decided to promote Beijing Olympics with more green initiatives spearheaded by a thematic logo and joined action.

London 2012 already teamed up with WWF and BioRegional to make it “One Planet Olympics” which has resulted in a favourable decision making at the time of winning the bid for the event. BioRegional, who have over 10 years experience in sustainable development projects, worked closely with London 2012 to research and write the ‘Towards a One Planet Olympics’ report which details solutions for zero waste and low carbon strategies, local supply networks, sustainable transport , wildlife biodiversity and an ongoing legacy for a sustainable community.
Kerala, also started Eco-Kerala initiative and the details can be found from the following link.

www.keralatourism.org:8080/keralatourism/sidenews/ecokerala/Eco.htm

Here, there are several questions that are arising:
• Should the Government support Green policies or certifications by incentives and/or legal regulations?
• Should we have our own local ‘brand’ for certification or should we support international certification?
• How can we learn from the experiences of other countries and regions in this regard?

The decision has to be made by the visionary Tourism Minister, officials of the Department and industry players on these issues to reap the benefit of tourism industry in a sustained manner. Thus we could create another “Kerala model development” which will be appreciated by the world.