ISLAMABAD, July 11: Tourism is a major source of poverty alleviation in many countries but in Pakistan it remains neglected because it is considered an activity for the enjoyment of the rich.

Thus while the high and mighty of this land talked at a seminar here on Saturday of the mountains of Pakistan including Northern Areas as the emblems of beauty, they apparently had no time to think how long would this beauty endure after the kind of development one sees in Murree being pursued in brazen violation of the environmental and urban development laws.

Cases in point are the Cecil apartments being built without any certification required under the law and the New Murree colony being implemented by the Punjab government in utter disregard of the warnings by experts who likened the current state of environmental degradation in Murree to a 'time bomb'.

Yet, as Abdul Latif Rao, the country representative of IUCN, observed in the Golden Jubilee of K2 seminar, tourism is a burgeoning business and the source of 4.4 per cent of the world GDP and employer of one-tenth of the world's workforce.

Tourism has the potential to help countries respond to global challenges, if its growth "is managed wisely, with an emphasis on fairness, poverty alleviation, the particular interests of developing states, environment and sustainable development," he pointed out.

These principles are embodied in the Global Code of Ethics adopted by the World Tourism Organization in 1999. The mountains, for all their rugged beauty, are home to poverty in its starkest sense, because of the paucity of wealth- creating assets such as cultivable land, tradable goods and access to markets, both domestic and foreign.

At the same time, tourism as the trigger for a multiplicity of activities is a major service industry now and can be made to provide employment to the poor. Nevertheless, the IUCN executive observed, its potential for the developing country governments and development assistance agencies for poverty alleviation was insufficient.

Tourism, when developed only to cater to the rich, can put the poor at a disadvantage through displacement, increased cost of living, loss of access to resources and socio-cultural disruption.

Work on pro-poor tourism has, however, identified several reasons as to why it is relevant to poverty reduction and to achieving the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations.

In 2000, for instance, tourism ranked third among the major merchandise exports of developing countries. Tourists are often attracted to remote areas because of their natural wildlife, landscape and high cultural values.

The tourism product by its very nature draws on assets of the poor (cultural knowledge, natural resources, rural space) and employs and requires training of a high proportion of vulnerable groups: women, youth, unskilled workers, and can involve a wide cross-section of enterprises as well as the informal sector at large. The infrastructure required for tourism - transport, communications, health care, water, sewage, energy supply - is another potential medium for uplift of the poor.

Mountaineering in Northern Areas (NAs) created the need for local guides, cooks and porters that helped raise incomes of the poverty-stricken local mountain communities.

Through its multiplier effect, it also helped sustain the livelihoods of other local people involving such services as transport, food, lodgings, handicrafts, only to name a few.

According to an estimate, Mr Rao also noted, around 12,000 people of the Northern Areas were directly related to the tourism business, while up to 90,000 others were benefiting indirectly from it. This means that more than 50 per cent of the total work force is associated with the tourism trade alone.

But natural resources have been degraded in the NAs due to over-exploitation and mismanagement. Nevertheless, protected areas i.e. national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, game reserves and community-managed hunting areas have been set up to conserve and allow sustainable use of these resources.

Eco-tourism, Mr Rao cautioned, would have adverse impacts, if not managed well because the local mountain communities might face the problems of pollution of water, soil and air from solid waste, sewage from hotels and pollutants from transport as well as damaged vegetation, wildlife and landscape.

He also pointed out that tourism in mountains was often seasonal, with most activities being squeezed in four to five months. Introducing and promoting new products, especially winter sports such as skiing, festivals, winter air safari, could expand the season.

Mr Rao, alluding to the recent unfortunate sectarian riots in Gilgit due to negligence of the relevant government agencies forcing all the tourists to cut short their holidays, said good security condition was key to tourism and other investments in a country.

The functionary of a skiing club observed that a number of festivals were held during winter in the Northern Areas. These could be developed for the interest of tourists. But would the bigoted elements, which destroyed a 2,000-year-old Banyan tree in sector E-7 of Islamabad under the very noses of the security agencies, allow such celebrations?