Introduction
Ensuring availability and access to water for all
The right to water constitutes one of the most fundamental human rights. For many communities, particularly those living in the Global South, this right is being compromised by tourism development. The inequities of water access and availability between resorts, large hotels and golf courses on the one hand, and local communities and small-scale tourism entrepreneurs on the other, are starkly played out in holiday destinations in some of the world’s poorest countries. While hotels ensure their guests can have several show- ers a day, swimming pools, a round of golf and lush gardens, neighbouring households, small businesses and agricultural producers can regularly endure severe water scarcity. As long as hotels are prioritised over communities, conflict and resentment will grow, so undermining the potential for tourism to contribute to sustainable development.
Hotel development needs to be carefully regulated to ensure that hotels and resorts do not syphon off – quite literally – much needed water from local communities. Developments in places like Bali, Goa, Zanzibar and the Gambia have led to the privatisation of water supplies, placing poorer sections of the communities in serious health risk, not to mention financial distress. Scarcity of water is rarely about its complete absence; it is much more often about its misappropriation.
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Sustainable management
Part of any new regulatory framework must be recommendations concerning sustainability of water supply and sanitation. This cannot be left to hotels themselves, or to developers, for such concerns do not immediately rise to the top of their list of priorities. Sustain- ability entails costs, and these need to be borne by everyone in a fair way. Government has to mediate on behalf of its citizens to ensure that this is achieved.
Education is likely to play a large part in raising awareness of sustainability, and this will apply to schools, businesses, planners and architects, and property developers. Engineers will need to be trained and employed to ensure that good systems are put in place, maintained and improved. The tourist industry will have to play its part; it must become part of the solution rather than a large part of the problem.
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There are examples of good practice. The American-owned Starwood Hotels group has committed to reducing water consumption by 20 percent by 2020. This hotel chain offered a five US dollar voucher to spend in any of their US based hotels, if guests did not have their rooms cleaned every day. These rewards have acted as an incentive, raised customer awareness, and helped to adjust perspectives, expectations and consumption. Another company, Soneva, who have hotels in Thailand and the Maldives, have stopped taking water from the public water supply and switched to 60 percent from rainwater collection or wells and 40 percent from desalination plants. (GreenHoteliers, 2013)
Water needs to be on top of the agenda, not only regarding availability and access, but also in terms of the infrastructure and good governance vital to maintaining sustainability.
Sanitation for all
Good water supplies are also essential to sound sanitation. It is imperative that waste is disposed of safely and that water supplies are not contaminated in the process. Diseases like cholera and typhoid are endemic when this is not the case. These matters hit the headlines when natural disasters like earthquakes strike and destroy elements of the water infrastructure.
Water contamination is a problem in many parts of the world. The improper disposal of sewage and dry waste, as well as increasing saltwater intrusion caused by groundwater over-extraction is contaminating groundwater and waterways, forcing communities to increase dependence on erratic public supplies or unregulated private vendors. The absence of monitoring here means there is limited knowledge of existing and future water availability. This is a massive problem that is posing risks to community health and well-being (>> Goal 3), impeding socio-economic mobility, harming livelihoods, threatening food security and undermining the sustainability of the tourism sector itself.
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