South Pacific Tourism looks to its ocean & the ‘circular economy’

Tour­ism is a tar­get under Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goal (SDG) 14.7: “By 2030, increase the eco­nom­ic bene­fits to Small Island devel­op­ing States and least developed coun­tries from the sus­tain­able use of mar­ine resources, includ­ing through sus­tain­able man­age­ment of fish­er­ies, aquacul­ture and tourism.”

SPTO says it is work­ing with part­ners on a range of ini­ti­at­ives that can help achieve this tar­get in the Pacific, including:

• SPTO is com­mit­ted to sus­tain­able whale watch­ing in Pacific waters. SPTO and the Sec­ret­ari­at of the Pacific Region­al Envir­on­ment Pro­gramme (SPREP) are lead part­ners in the vol­un­tary com­mit­ment towards the “Pacific Year of the Whale Declar­a­tion”, an out­come of the Whales in a Chan­ging Oceans Con­fer­ence, held in Nuku’alofa, Tonga in April 2017.
• Anoth­er col­lab­or­a­tion between SPREP and SPTO involves the devel­op­ment of “Region­al Coastal Tour­ism Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment Guidelines”, which is being led by envir­on­ment­al experts at SPREP and includes input from Pacific tour­ism stake­hold­ers and SPTO. Both part­ners recog­nise the import­ance of envir­on­ment­al impact assess­ments in the respons­ible devel­op­ment and man­age­ment of tourism.

SPTO CEO Chris Cock­er said: “Amongst oth­er ini­ti­at­ives, we are work­ing with our part­ners to cre­ate aware­ness for the tour­ism sec­tor and to encour­age the private sec­tor to re-look at their daily busi­ness prac­tices, ensur­ing that waste and waste water are respons­ibly dis­charged; bio­de­grad­able chem­ic­als are used; diving and recre­ation­al activ­it­ies are mon­itored while mar­ine eco­sys­tems around their bound­ar­ies are protected.

“Our coastal com­munit­ies and the gen­er­al pub­lic also need to be more respons­ible,” he added before cit­ing a need to ban plastic bags.

SPTO’s advocacy efforts have been heightened in 2017, the Inter­na­tion­al Year of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism for Devel­op­ment. UNWTO is call­ing for tour­ism devel­op­ment to be a part of “Integ­rated Coastal Zone Man­age­ment” in order to pre­serve and con­serve fra­gile mar­ine ecosystems.

Accord­ing to the SPTO the Oceans Con­fer­ence was “a mile­stone achieve­ment for the world and the Pacific region in par­tic­u­lar, giv­en the depend­ency of Pacific people on ocean resources for live­li­hoods and eco­nom­ic development”.

SPTO says the Pacific Islands were well rep­res­en­ted reflect­ing the sig­ni­fic­ance of the ocean to the Small Islands Devel­op­ing States.

Speak­ing at a side event at the Oceans Con­fer­ence, Ms Fekit­amoe­loa Katoa ‘Utoikamanu high­lighted the import­ance of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goal (SDG) 14 to “con­serve and sus­tain­ably use the oceans, seas and mar­ine resources for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment” par­tic­u­larly to coun­tries where mil­lions of people depend on mar­ine resources for their nutri­tion and their livelihoods.

Ms ‘Utoikamanu, who is the United Nations Under-Sec­ret­ary Gen­er­al for the Least Developed Coun­tries, Land­locked Devel­op­ing Coun­tries and Small Island Devel­op­ing States, said: “Har­ness­ing ocean resources in a sus­tain­able man­ner can lift com­munit­ies out of poverty by increas­ing the eco­nom­ic bene­fits that flow to them, espe­cially from the fish­er­ies and tour­ism sectors.

“New and emer­ging sec­tors such as aquacul­ture and off­shore min­er­al explor­a­tion also hold great poten­tial for these coun­tries to derive fur­ther eco­nom­ic bene­fits from the ocean.”

Fekit­amoe­loa Katoa ‘Utoikamanu (left) & Chris Cocker

The circular economy: getting around to it

SPTO CEO Chris Cock­er recently atten­ded the World Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy For­um (WCEF) in Hel­sinki, Fin­land. WCEF was the first glob­al meet­ing of its kind and was organ­ised by the Min­istry of Envir­on­ment in Fin­land and the United Nations Envir­on­ment Pro­gramme (UNEP). Among the 1500 del­eg­ates from 105 coun­tries, Mr Cock­er was appar­ently the only rep­res­ent­at­ive from the Pacific Islands.

Accord­ing to the World Busi­ness Coun­cil for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment (WBCSD), the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy is regen­er­at­ive by design and moves away from the tra­di­tion­al “take-make-dis­pose” mod­el to retain as much value as pos­sible from resources, products, parts and mater­i­als. The cir­cu­lar eco­nomy mod­el cre­ates a sys­tem that allows for long life, option­al reuse, refur­bish­ment, re-man­u­fac­tur­ing and recycling.

SPTO reck­ons European coun­tries are at the fore­front of the shift towards a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy. A num­ber of European coun­tries have passed legis­la­tion on resource recyc­ling and reuse and have set nation­al tar­gets for waste reduc­tion and water management.

Mr Cock­er said: “While the concept has been in Europe for many years it is not widely under­stood and embraced by many busi­nesses as yet and it remains a chal­lenge today to change the mind­set of busi­nesses to adopt a cir­cu­lar mindset.”

“Through the WCEF, Europe is shar­ing the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy mind­set with the world with the hope that the world’s coun­tries will move towards cir­cu­lar eco­nom­ies in the near future.”

Source: World Eco­nom­ic Forum

SPTO says the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy is ideal for tour­ism stake­hold­ers in the Pacific and is in line with the focus of IY2017 and the moves by SPTO to advoc­ate for effect­ive waste & water man­age­ment and renew­able energy options.

Mr Cock­er said: “The meet­ing was very inspir­ing and it was very inter­est­ing to hear from coun­tries about the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy which is a shift from busi­ness as usu­al and the lin­ear eco­nomy to focus more on cre­at­ing value, profit and jobs through­out the whole cycle.

“It has so much poten­tial to drive private sec­tor growth and is an approach that we should def­in­itely embrace and imple­ment in this region, giv­en the right sup­port and resources.

“SPTO will cer­tainly be shar­ing les­sons learned with our mem­ber coun­tries. And through the new net­works estab­lished at the WCEF, we will also look at imple­ment­ing “best prac­tices” from case stud­ies that are applic­able to our tour­ism industry.”

SPTO says the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy is the biggest oppor­tun­ity to trans­form pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion since the first indus­tri­al revolu­tion 250 years ago.

Source: This post was based on SPTO press releases. Fea­tured image: Bait ball. Sourced from here (ori­gin­al photographer/source unknown; if you know, let me know).