Beyond Greening - Tourism Watch

Beyond Greening: Reflections on Tourism in the Rio-Process | Positioningpaperamounting to four and a half times the size of the allocation in the previous plan. Where willthe money come from to finance such an enormous increase in allocations?IFI-funded subregional tourism infrastructureThe first decade of this century has been marked by IFIs paving the way for South Asiannations under the rubric of developing subregional tourism infrastructure projects modelledafter the Mekong Subregional Tourism model as well as pushing IFI assisted "inclusive"infrastructure development projects in the region. Although regional economic cooperationalliances have existed (e.g. SAARC), ADB has prioritized sub-regional cooperation andintegration for development, by projecting the hinterland and borderland as "gateways". Butmany see beneath this rhetoric traces of the "growth triangle or quadrangle" or "sub-regionaleconomic zone" concept that a few lead economies of the region had toyed with in the late1980s and early 90s at the behest of ADB and other donor agencies. The success factors ofthese triangles or quadrangles were the presence of a highly developed and well endowedcity/area that has run out of land and labour, a surrounding area plentiful in land and labour,and a political desire to reduce the visible and invisible distance between the two. ADBdocuments claim that the rationale for supporting sub-regional cooperation rests on twofactors – to permit countries to respond collectively to common trans-boundary problems andsecondly improving access to expertise, trade, investment, information and technology. Thereis also a claim that a sub-regional cooperation strategy can advance poverty reduction byfreeing up trade and transactions, improving regulatory environments, increasingcompetitiveness and enabling countries to meet their trade liberalisation commitments. 59Since stand-alone tourism projects were found to be extremely difficult to execute efficientlyon account of the cross-sectoral nature of tourism coupled with complex institutionalframeworks, IFIs couched them under the rubric of being a sub-component in biodiversityconservation projects (for example a project in Sikkim funded by the Japan InternationalCooperation Agency – JICA) or infrastructure and transport projects. One of the importantcriteria set down by IFIs like ADB for approving sector specific lending is the institutionalcapacity of the borrowing country and implementing agency to formulate comprehensive andlong term sector development plans and execute projects that might be funded with a vision toachieve them. Till now the strategy has been first to fund technical assistance and rope in aconsultant agency to formulate such a sector development plan which may subsequently leadto projects that can be funded.Poor community participationProjects are planned away from the public gaze and without substantial participation oforganisations that work with local communities in analysing the social and ecological impactsof tourism. 60 In India, local communities have time and again opposed these projects. Forexample, the opposition from local communities to ADB financed "inclusive tourisminfrastructure development project" related works in the vicinity of Pong Dam in HimachalPradesh and alternative suggestions put forth by them clearly underline the fact that until avery late stage, community participation is not actively sought despite the lip service andrhetoric employed in published reports by international financial institutions and central andstate governments receiving external aid for tourism development. Even the criticism voiced by59Asian Development Bank, Annual Report, 200460Equations (2008): IFIs and Tourism: Perspectives and Debates87