HOLY SEE DELEGATE ADDRESSES U.N. FORUM ON ECOTOURISM

VATICAN CITY, MAY 22, 2002 (VIS) - Msgr. Piero Monni, Holy See permanent observer to the World Tourism Organization, late yesterday afternoon addressed the United Nations program for the environment, the World Summit on Ecotourism, which began May 19 and ends today in Quebec, Canada.

Msgr. Monni noted that, "in a rapidly evolving modern world, ... the tourism sector plays a considerable role. ... A sector that appears still fragile and changing, (tourism) represents today the third export industry at a world level. ... It is an industry which, instead of exporting merchandise, imports consumers." Yet, he admonished, "we cannot forget, as the Holy Father recently recalled, 'those tourism offers of 'artificial paradises', where, for merely commercial reasons, populations and local cultures are exploited to benefit a tourism that does not even respect the most elementary human rights of the local people'."

He said that, for the development of the "new type of tourism, ecotourism, ... it is indispensable to have as a reference point the central character of the human being, recalling the premier principle adopted by the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development in 1992 according to which 'the human person is at the center of concerns for a lasting development'. Such an approach inevitably involves a revision and reorganization of operational systems that aim to obtain immediate economic and financial results to the detriment of a lasting ecotourism, which calls for preserving the common cultural patrimony."

Msgr. Monni pointed out that, in the specialized world of ecotourism, "the participation of local and indigenous communities in organizing, examining and administering tourism activities, as well as the decision processes linked to them, must be guaranteed. ... It would be interesting to evaluate the impact of ecotourism on the protection of the environment and on the socio-economic development of the local communities themselves."

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