Goal 12: responsible consumption and production

By Christine Plüss and Nina Sahdeva, akte and Carina Tremel, KATE

ABSTRACT: Tourism is a weighty field of consumption and a powerful service sector that contributes about ten percent to the world’s GDP. Sustainable consumption and production patterns are central to sustainable tourism. Goal 12 contains an explicit target on tourism under 12.b: „Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable development impacts for sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products“. This kind of monitoring, however, cannot be restricted to tourism development in the destinations alone. Goal 12 is highly charged and at the same time groundbreaking, as it also holds source markets accountable, including tourists as well as tourism organisers in both traditional and newly emerging tourist sending countries, and in destinations.