Relations between lhe UNESCO and the World Tourism Organisation: meeting the challenges of sustainable tourism

Abstract

Tourism is an important instrument of economic development and a sector of growing importance in the world economy since the last century. But tourism is also an activity that has significant negative externalities on the environment of the destination, making it very important to address the challenges of sustainable tourism. With this objective in mind, UNESCO and the World Tourism Organisation have established an ongoing cooperative relationship that has served to include references to the need to respect and protect the culture of the destination, understood on the basis of UNESCO’s work, in the legal content of sustainable tourism. In relation to heritage tourism, i.e. tourism affecting sites on the World Heritage List, sustainable tourism becomes an instrument for their conservation and dissemination.