5. Possible actions for developed country governments

Developed Countries have a key role in ensuring that we are able to make tourism more sustainable. The policies that they enact at home give the right signals to the industry operating in their or abroad. We have drawn from the workshops some key recommendations.

Governments should:

· make greater linkage between tourism and overseas development aid and its use;

· further clarify departmental lines of responsibility for outgoing tourism in developed countries, including the identification of a Minister who has responsibility for outgoing tourism;

· encourage a more integrated approach in the use of tourism for local economic development, by involving other ministries alongside a tourism ministry. This will help ensure that other departments' policy matches, or is less likely to be in conflict with, tourism development policy;

· fund a range of initiatives to further examine the feasibility sustainable tourism. For example a series of pilot projects could be used to develop modes of "good practice";

· assist in the development of local public/private partnerships in a way that is appropriate to developing country destinations;

· assist in the development of appropriate policy and legislative frameworks, technical skills and methodologies in order to realise this shift in the management of the tourist development process;

· assist in training processes, which build local and national capacity to manage tourism at the local levels, help achieve sustainable tourism and contribute to poverty eradication;

· support public education programmes which encourage responsible tourism;

· build the political will to meet development targets through people's experience of tourism;

· utilise their position within the World Bank/IMF to ensure that they are implementing policies that support sustainable tourism.

· increase funding for local CBOs to enable them to engage in a proper dialogue on tourism;

Furthermore the European Union should:

· ensure that the work of the Commission takes account of the outcomes from CSD99;

· facilitate research grants which support research on sustainable tourism, methodologies, impacts and best practice analysis.