For years the tourism industry and States have dominated activities related to tourism. Henceforth, other concerned categories must impose themselves as actors of tourism. First are the local people (their elect, their groups of women, artisans, teachers, their youth etc.), who have been excluded from decisions, and then there are different actors of civil society and competent NGOs both in the host country as well as that of the tourist. Finally, the tourist himself, often a passive consumer must play an active role.

The World Tourism Organisation (WTO), has since a few years, driven itself to provide reference texts to the sector so that tourism engages in a perspective of sustainable development. These texts are liked by more or less diversified readers...

The Charter of Sustainable Tourism published after a Conference that gathered many hundreds of people¹ - in order to formalize reactions to the Earth Summit at Rio in the field of tourism - is more to our liking as compared to the International Code of Ethics of Tourism², adopted during the General Assembly of the WTO in autumn 1999. The latter has more formal authority.

Is it not natural for civil society to appropriate a document that is more inspiring and rich than another one especially when texts are buried faster than they are published?

That explains our choice of reproducing extracts of this lesser known Charter, rather than the Code of Ethics.

D.V.

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