Towards The Transformation of Tourism

The 2030 Agenda and its vision

Following intensive negotiations, the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development was adopted by governments in September 2015 at the largest UN summit ever. The adoption was a long overdue step to interdependently address two of the most urgent challenges in today’s world: sustainability and development. While the “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs) focussed mainly on the symptoms of extreme poverty, the 2030 Agenda also addresses its structural causes and is based on human rights. Its path-breaking title “Transforming our World” clearly rejects the idea of a passive business as usual approach.

The ambition to reach the ‘furthest behind first’ and to leave no one behind is one of the key transformative aspects. All countries committed to implement the 2030 Agenda according to their respective challenges. This includes that rich countries have to reduce their disproportionally high and globally unsustainable resource consumption and reform their trade, financial, and development policies in ways which do not discriminate against developing countries.

In tourism the dividing lines do not only run between rich and poor countries, but also between people who have the luxury to travel as tourists and those who do not even have a day off working, let alone a holiday. The 2030 Agenda offers a necessary perspective to focus on those billions of people who do not travel internationally, while many of them are affected by tourism. Tourism is an affluence-related phenomenon. The tourism sector therefore has a particular responsibility to do no harm and to ensure that people, the environment, and our climate are not negatively affected. The SDGs can provide guidance for tourism development and practise and enable the sector to play a better role in achieving the 2030 Agenda.