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World Tourism Day, Tourism & Water, All at Sea

Lampedusa: one more immigrant tragedy in the touristy mediterraneanThe UNWTO this year has picked "Tourism and Water" as the theme of the World Tourism Day. Should they/we be celebrating? While access to clean water and sanitation is not a given for over a billion people in the global south, northern multinationals, use vast amounts of water (private swimming pools, golf courses) often in semi-arid and arid areas, to pamper their affluent guests in luxury resorts / enclaves for the rich that displace vulnerable communities and destroy coastal ecosystems.

General annual "parental-advisory" type calls on holiday-makers to voluntarily "minimize" or, worse, "offset" their water use are hypocritical and simply do not work. Can private water offset projects, even technologically-novel ones such as those producing water from air humidity, replace a government's responsibility to provide water and sanitation to all inhabitants in a general, permanent and not sporadic manner (i.e. one village has water due to the benevolence of private benefactors, 10 villages nearby do not).  Does anyone seriously believe that meeting basic human needs can be left to "Corporate social responsibility" and voluntary corporate participation in paper schemes, most of which can certify & guarantee little more than the rate of bathroom towel change?

That said an unequal, neocolonial tourism model suitable to the general inequality and prevailing injustice is a reality and we cannot instantly leap from A to Z. But to start moving in the right (left) direction what would make some difference, with reference to water use, would be stricter legislation and heavy fines for water waste pollution by existing resorts as well as a moratorium or ban on new resort creation at least in water-deficient and other sensitive areas. For a change, real taxes levied on offshore-based corporate empires that consume precious environmental resources such as water and in many cases produce little more than menial and low-paid jobs for a few locals, when not using imported 'students' and 'trainees', assisted by accounting tricks and generous laws prepared by overeager regimes, their military, friends and family...Do you really expect these to care about "water"?

A longer term solution however, which seems unrealistic until there is a sea change (or when the sea starts rising faster!), would be degrowth in this (and other) global industry/sector infatuated with perpetual growth & geographic expansion, in water-poor resorts, accompanied by a gradual phasing out of the current (capitalist-controlled, mass-produced, neocolonialist) tourism model and its replacement by a smaller scale, environmentally sustainable, grassroots, community-owned and worker-managed tourism, that meets local needs and aspirations.

All of the above in no way implies that tourism should become elitist and only for the affluent few. Tourism, leisure and visa-free international travel should be fully recognised as human rights and should be available at a reasonable price to all workers of all countries and through social tourism programs to unemployed and the underpriviledged as well. How far we still are from such a vision was made clear with the latest human tragedy in the (former?) island tourism destination of Lampedusa. And how tragic and insulting that the survivors will now have to face 'justice'. Would the UNWTO ever do something in favour of open borders (for people not capital that is)? Unlikely, at its members are not activists or workers, but representatives of national governments and of the powerful corporate bosses.

So, for the time being, tourism & water is "All at Sea"!

 

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