LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines — The secretary general of the United
Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) urged world leaders to open
their skies and borders in order to bring people closer together and
drive economic growth.
Air connectivity—or opening the borders and skies of every
country to tourists—would improve and sustain economic growth, UNWTO
secretary general Taleb Rifai said here on Saturday, the penultimate day
of the weeklong UNWTO conference at Oriental Hotel here.
The air connectivity program was among the significant items on the agenda of the 26th Joint Meeting of the UNWTO Commission for East
Asia and the Pacific and the UNWTO Commission for South Asia, a related
conference also held here on Saturday.
Rifai also presided over the UNWTO-Asean International Conference
on Tourism and Climate Change-Global Code of Ethics for Tourism (GCET)
that representatives from member-nations convened on Sunday.
President Benigno Aquino is expected to grace Monday’s closing rites of the UNWTO conferences.
As a top UNWTO official, Rifai pictured tourism as a powerful
force in the world, saying “I want billions of people to travel every
year going to other countries… This way it would be an opportunity for
people to be together, understand each other and promote their
respective nations, thus breaking the barrier that separates them.”
Tourism development deals with two basic aspects—the natural
environment and the natural heritage. It would be in the best interest
of the industry to keep the environment clean and protected, he said.
“We believe that tourism can be one of the vehicles versus
climate change. That is why we are meeting here to set up policies that
would counter the effects of climate change and to make people aware of
the value of the environment they have to protect.”
As for the implementation of a Global Code of Ethics on tourism,
the UNWTO official said the code was approved and adopted by the United
Nations General Assembly in 2003. The code has 10 principles to cover
the economic, social, cultural and environmental components of travel
and tourism.
According to Rifai, the code has strict rules against abusing the
environment; building tourism facilities that promote child labor and
trafficking of women; destroying cultural artifacts, citing as an
example the poaching in Africa; and any tourism market that would
destroy lives and communities.
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