Rethinking tourism for resilient mountain development in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

Organisers: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), and Community Homestay Network (CHN)

CONCEPT NOTE

About the event

On World Tourism Day, we are organising a symposium in collaboration with the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA), and Community Homestay Network (CHN). The symposium aims to highlight the sustainability of tourism in mountain regions as a critical contributor to the Sustainable Development Goals and climate action agendas, and innovative solutions as an important lever in building the resilience of mountain destinations, businesses, and services in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region.

Objectives

• Share current policies, practices, and science-based knowledge on the challenges and opportunities in promoting innovative solutions for future-proofing mountain tourism destinations, business, and services
• Promote regional learning through sharing of experiences and best practices
• Explore opportunities for harnessing innovative solutions and multistakeholder collaboration at the regional level

Outcomes

• Sharing regional experiences, best practices and learning while promoting innovative actions for building resilient mountain destinations, business, and service
• Enhanced understanding about opportunities to harness innovative solutions and collaboration

Background

Sustainable tourism has great potential to bring about transformative change in the HKH region. It is an important driver of socio-economic development through job creation, service export, investment, destination development, and marketing and promotion. Sustainable tourism provides inclusive spaces with huge opportunities for women and youth, thereby stemming outmigration, generating local jobs, and supporting small businesses and services. Sustainable tourism is therefore a sustainable development agenda, the means, and end of which, are its people.

However, mountain destinations and their people are facing multiple crises arising from climate change and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The Global Risk Report 2022 ranks ‘climate action failure’ as the number one long-term threat with severe impacts over the next decade. The pandemic has exacerbated the issues further, as the impacts were widely felt in the tourism sector and its supply chains, bringing mountain economies to a standstill. The impacts of such crises were disproportionately felt by mountain tourism stakeholders – small businesses (MSMEs) and frontline workers, particularly women and youth.

Given this context, the future of sustainable tourism lies in the ability of the HKH countries and tourism stakeholders to innovate and think about a range of solutions, co-designed and co-developed through reconsidering and reengineering development and business approaches, and developing action plans that contribute to green, inclusive, and resilience building pathways.

Agenda

27 September 2022; 09:00–13:30 (NPT)