Green Transition

Lotte Thomsen is Associate Professor of Business and Development at the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School. She holds a PhD in Economic Geography from Copenhagen University.

UNESCO’s World Heritage designation of places around the world has the honorable purpose of taking responsibility. Taking responsibility for the preservation of things that may otherwise be left unpreserved, and for which destruction would be a severe loss. Yet, making it to the World Heritage List is known to have both positive and negative effects that reach far beyond the  preservation of, for example, architecture. It may change the daily life of host communities immensely – not least in the Global South. The World Heritage site of Hoi An in central Vietnam is one of those places in which listing has led to preservation and enormous change at the same time! The city itself certainly is both well-preserved and stunning. But what is going on behind the facades of the beautiful old houses that millions of tourists visit every year? And what are the effects on the business sector?

‘Authenticity’ and Retail in Hoi An In the article ‘Retail in Places of World Heritage and Transition: Selling Clothes to Tourists in a Context of ‘Planned Authenticity’’ (Thomsen, 2018), I show how Hoi An’s transformation into a heritage tourism site has led to the emergence of a clothing retail sector that barely existed before. The sector plays a key role in the city’s contemporary tourism industry, and has come to appear as an ‘authentic’ part of the landscape of ancient buildings and monuments.

The paper shows how the creation of a clothing retail market was linked to a well-planned configuration of an ‘authentic’ Tailor City. It is to a large extent a reflection of interactions between the transitional Vietnamese economy and heritage listing. And it is reinforced by the urge of tourists to buy presumed place-specific products such as souvenirs or tailored clothes to preserve their memories of the place of Hoi An – regardless of how few links such products actually have to the place or its history and traditions.

A Retail Landscape of Opportunities and Challenges So, why is this revitalization of Hoi An not merely impressive, but also in some ways problematic, not least seen from a development perspective?

Well, heritage designation did in many ways boost the city’s economy, making Hoi An one of Vietnam’s largest tourist attractions. And surely this came about due to extremely well targeted and impressive local planning in interplay with the World Heritage listing. It also created much needed jobs and prosperity linked to the tourism industry in the formerly poor agrarian area. Still, the revitalization of the city also represents a development that is highly uneven. It has made certain people more powerful, some activities and products more important and ‘authentic’, and some retailers better positioned in Hoi An’s tourism economy than others.

The paper shows how the opportunities of the clothing retailers vary significantly and are related to their status within a network of tourism stakeholders. A network that is intrinsically related to the ways that businesses and the state interact in Vietnam’s transitional economy. My intention here is not at all to point fingers at the Vietnamese authorities that cleverly utilized highly needed opportunities for economic development. What else should they have done? My intention is also not really to blame UNESCO that acted to preserve invaluable world heritage.

The impact on clothing retailers that are explored in much more detail in the paper was not easily foreseen. Yet, certain consequences could perhaps have be mitigated if international interventions like those of UNESCO are done with more caution and based on a deeper understanding of those local contexts and relations they tip into.

The example of Hoi An surely serves to remind us to critically assess and consider all kinds of effects of interventions locally. It reminds us of the importance of understanding better how different types of interventions – that undoubtedly are essential in their own right and done in the spirit of responsibility – play out differently in different places.

The full paper can be accessed via this link: Thomsen, L. (2018). Retailing in places of World Heritage, transition and “planned authenticity.” Geoforum,91, 245–252.

YAQUTA KANCHWALA FATEHI / DANA GORODETSKY

First published on NextBillion here.

How can partnerships between the private sector, governments and NGOs help advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and what’s the best way to measure the success of these collaborations? How can these institutions join forces effectively with local communities for real and sustainable impact? How can progress toward both global and local sustainability be measured uniformly given the proliferation of performance indicators?

These are a few of the questions explored at the recent Sustainability and Development Conference (SDC) at the University of Michigan. The event drew nearly 500 academics and practitioners from around the world, and we attended on behalf of the William Davidson Institute (WDI – NextBillion’s parent organization).

The conference delivered some essential insights on the private sector’s role in sustainability and development. Here are some key takeaways.

SHIFTING FROM TRANSACTIONAL TO TRANSFORMATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS

There’s a growing awareness that the private sector has a role to play in advancing sustainability and development goals – and the SDGs in particular. Rosina Bierbaum at the University of Maryland highlighted the strong financial case being made for sustainability efforts in the “Adapt Now: A Global Call For Leadership On Climate Resilience” report. And as Mette Olwig from Roskilde University pointed out in her session on “commodifying humanitarianism,” profit and doing good are increasingly seen as going hand-in-hand – and “doing good” is increasingly defined as working toward the SDGs. The goals offer a convenient and visible framework for sustainability and development efforts that appeals to the business world.

These trends are welcome, given the concern raised by World Vision’s Keith Dokho in a panel on leveraging private sector resources for development impact: namely, that philanthropy alone cannot bridge the estimated annual US $2.5-3 trillion gap in investment needed to achieve the SDGs. One way private sector actors are helping to address this gap is by shifting from transactional to transformational partnerships.

Transformational partnerships are built on common goals and values among organizations, and have potential for deeper change than transactional partnerships. They require companies to move beyond their charitable foundation or corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, and to engage their core business units in working to achieve the SDGs. The efforts of corporate foundations and CSR units can fall in the transactional partnership category, as they tend to focus on brand recognition and marketing targeted at Global North consumers, resulting in less Global South social impact. We believe that companies should continue seeking ways to tie their core business activities to environmental and social metrics, and use them together with business metrics to generate sustainable and scalable positive change – while also driving growth and revenue.

EXPLORING NEW FRAMEWORKS FOR MEASURING IMPACT

It can be hard to make sense of all the different forms of partnerships that the private sector may engage in to advance the SDGs. It can be equally challenging to answer questions like:

• Was this cross-sector partnership a success?
• What worked – and what were the unintended consequences?
• Is there any way to predict a partnership’s change potential?

A number of assessment frameworks aim to answer some of these questions – but few of them are suited to cross-sector partnerships focused on sustainability and international development. A new, integrated framework presented by Thilde Langevang from the Copenhagen Business School aims to assess the actual impact of these kinds of partnerships as development agents. It seeks to unearth insights in agency and empowerment from the beneficiaries of cross-sector partnership that are not immediately apparent.

Langevang illustrated this approach with a case study on a partnership between a Ghanaian NGO employing women to produce beads and a Danish jewelry producer, whose overarching goal was poverty alleviation through the employment of single mothers. While the partnership achieved certain outputs and targets, assessing it through this new framework revealed critical limitations. For example, the women who were being employed were not the “poor and marginalized,” but rather women who already had resources to start a small business or find employment.

DEVELOPING MEASUREMENT APPROACHES THAT WORK

While presenters shared numerous methodologies and an incredible number of indicators relevant to their research questions, the discussion among the conference’s audience centered on how to systematically and sustainably measure the SDGs, given this proliferation of methods and indicators.

The Performance Measurement and Improvement team at WDI tried to reflect that focus in our own presentation at the event – through a private sector lens. We collaborate closely with private sector partners to co-create a theory of change framework for a market-based intervention – or even for the entire business unit – in order to measure the impacts of their interventions. Then, based on this framework, we develop the other components of a monitoring and evaluation plan – including determining the intervention’s key performance indicators (KPIs) and linking them to the SDGs.

WDI’s presentation at the conference gave examples of KPIs that can measure SDGs, and shared key lessons learned when conducting measurement activities with the private sector. We also made the case that measurement should be used not just for accountability and reporting, but also for the continuous improvement of projects. This is especially necessary because private sector actors cannot wait for years to get results and insights from an impact evaluation.

FINDING MEANINGFUL WAYS TO WORK WITH LOCAL COMMUNITIES

Many panelists at the conference echoed a key point: For work in sustainable development to be successful, organizations – including those in the private sector – must engage with local communities. But this engagement must happen in meaningful ways.

Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte of the Copenhagen Business School highlighted this through a comparison of Starbuck’s Kahawa Bora initiative and a Rikolto project, which both involved smallholder coffee farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their research categorized Kahawa Bora as a top-down partnership, involving a lead firm (i.e., Starbucks) upon which much of the success of the project hinged. The panelists found that the Congolese coffee farmers involved were essentially “sidekicks,” and their livelihoods depended on Starbucks purchasing the coffee. On the other hand, they described Rikolto’s project as a bottom-up partnership centered around cooperatives, in which the livelihood needs of the smallholder coffee farmers were front and center to the design and success of the project. They found that the volume of coffee production had grown over time for the Rikolto project, but was relatively stable in the Kahawa Bora project.

Another persistent challenge mentioned at the conference is the need to give weight to underrepresented or neglected local voices. The lack of perspectives from indigenous populations is a prime example of this shortcoming. Their engagement is especially critical in protecting natural resources – something these populations have often done for generations, in ways that are more sustainable than current approaches.

Similarly, there is a growing emphasis on incorporating smallholder farmers into solutions related to poverty alleviation and climate change. This is, in part, due to the multiple negative effects that industrial farming has on the environment. It’s also because smallholder farmers number around 500 million people, and they produce about 80% of the food consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. However, in one panel, Madhura Swaminathan of the Indian Statistical Institute raised the concern that development actors tend to romanticize the role of smallholder farmers in relieving stress on climate change and improving food security on a broad scale. She shared an example from India, where her research found that there is much yet to be understood about the heterogeneity of these farmers, and the nuances of their needs and opportunities in different contexts.

BRIDGING GAPS BETWEEN ACADEMICS AND PRACTITIONERS

The gap between academics and practitioners is a perennial challenge in development, and the composition of attendees at SDC 2019 clearly illustrated this issue. Practitioners represented a very small number of the roughly 500 attendees at the conference, and organizers hope to draw more to next year’s event.

The gap persists in part because many academics indeed do produce relevant and actionable research, which often goes unnoticed by practitioners. And in some cases, both academics and practitioners focus on single-issue interventions, rather than researching or implementing systematic solutions – as a result, they cannot find a fit with one another. This is especially true when academics use randomized control trials to identify causal inferences, since these findings cannot be used in a generalizable manner.

What’s more, the two groups often speak different languages, with each using specialized jargon that can lead to misunderstandings or disengagement when interacting with each other. And much academic research sits behind paywalls, where many practitioners lack the time or access to read them. Finally, as Diana Mitlin of the University of Manchester recognized in her plenary session, there is still a sense of elitism among some academics, which creates a barrier to engaging in debate with people who have different perspectives.

Many, including our teams at WDI, are conscious of the need to bridge this gap. In WDI’s case, the organization is situated at an academic institution, which makes this need even more urgent. We make an effort to apply rigorous methods and approaches, backed by academic literature and working in concert with leading faculty experts – but our partners and clients are largely practitioners. So we take great care to ensure that our communication methods, findings and reports are actionable, easily digestible and accessible to these audiences.

NEXT STEPS: TIME FOR A PROFESSIONAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SOCIETY?

Most of the ideas and challenges highlighted during SDC 2019 will take time, iteration and commitment to address. The event concluded with a discussion about the need to create a professional society for sustainability and development professionals. Some key questions on the society remain to be answered, such as what its goals should be, how to engage stakeholders beyond academia so research can be actionable, and how to organize active participation. But through the work of the conference organizers and others, interest and momentum seems to be building for this concept, which is an exciting development for such a diverse, multi-sectoral field.

Yaquta Fatehi is a program manager on the Performance Measurement Initiative and Dana Gorodetsky is a senior project manager on the grants management team at the William Davidson Institute.

By Erin Leitheiser

Tourism is a key driver of development, particularly in areas with rich environmental or cultural resources. The United Nations declared 2017 as the year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, but how sustainable is ecotourism?

Setting off on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure on safari in East Africa for our summer holidays, my husband and I wanted to be as sustainable as possible. We carbon offset our flights, worked directly with locally owned and operated “eco tour” providers, and engaged in both social and environmental eco-friendly activities. Yet, several moments throughout our trip made me question how ecofriendly and sustainable such travel really is or can be.

To start, what is “ecotourism”? The terms “ecotourism”, “responsible travel”, “sustainable tourism”, “ethical tourism”, “green travel” and more have arisen as of late to describe smaller-scale, lower-impact tourism that is qualitatively different from mass commercial tour operations. The term “ecotourism” has many definitions, most of which embody the key notions of supporting and experiencing local environments, wildlife and communities while minimizing negative impacts. Activities may be environmental, like through small-scale tours of natural environments, or social or community-based – like our visit to a local women’s education and empowerment sewing collective in Rwanda.

Tourism represents a major and increasing share of GDP in many developing countries. Indeed, such natural and cultural resources are increasingly being commodified and therefore used as justification for sustainability. According to one popular eco-travel blog, “Elephants are worth 76 times more alive than dead. When you consider the revenue from wildlife photography tours, luxury safari camps, and other ecotourism offerings, a single Elephant is worth $1.3 million over the course of its lifetime!”

But – how sustainable are such ventures? While I have numerous examples from my two weeks of travels, anecdotes from each country I visited caused me to question how ecofriendly or sustainable these activities really are:

• When nature disagrees with what is “eco-friendly”: chimpanzee tracking in Uganda (tourism=8% of GDP). After purchasing the proper permits (which help fund conservation activities), tourists are paired with a well-trained guide to track habituated chimp groups in the forest and are allowed to spend “at most an hour” with them once they’re found. Kibale Forest National Park states that “By going for chimpanzee tracking, you directly contribute to the conservation efforts.” My group got lucky and found one group of chimps within about 15 minutes, including a few on the ground which our guide had us follow through the forest. While I was happy to hang back and enjoy them at a distance, my guide – a fun but bossy, older sister type whom usually got her way – insisted that I get closer, at one point directing me ever closer a chimp lying on the ground. So, closer I went, even while in my head I was thinking “I’m too close!”. In an instant, the chimp jumped up, clapped and yelled angrily, and picked up a large branch which he threw at me javelin-style! I jumped back and he moved away. I felt so conflicted, as this seemed to me a striking example of how nature (i.e. the chimp) didn’t agree with how “eco-friendly” the activity was. When I pushed back on other insistencies by our guide to get closer to the chimps, she rationalized that “If you don’t get close and get some good pictures, when you get home, you might not think it was worth it.” Seemingly, our chimp tracking experience had a strong undercurrent of value-for-money, realized via pictures. (see the GIF of the chimp getting angry at me!)

• Wild animals may not be so wild: safari in Tanzania (tourism=12% of GDP). Departing a visitor’s center in Serengeti National Park in our safari vehicle, we – along with around two dozen other vehicles with tourists on safari – encountered a pride of lions out on a morning hunt. Large 4×4 vehicles lined the roadside, yet the lions seemed completely unperturbed by our presence, assessing the vehicles as non-threatening and navigating deftly between them. A couple of lions even used the vehicles (including mine) to hide between while they stalked their prey! This was striking to me, calling into question how “wild” these wild animals really are if they’re so used to human activity and presence that they have grown to utilize such intrusions for their own ends. Indeed, the vast numbers of vehicles in the parks and conservations areas seemed overwhelming at times, demonstrating clearly that the notions I had of “wild” animals and preserves as devoid of humans were romanticized at best or nearly inaccurate at worst.
• Prioritizing tourists over locals: fast highways in Rwanda (tourism=15% of GDP). The country of Rwanda was striking to me for its cleanliness, orderliness, and structure. For example, the streets were clean (much cleaner than Copenhagen), motorbike taxis are safe and highly regulated, the economy is booming, and the country has gradually begun to overcome its legacy of genocide to build a business-friendly, women-friendly, corruption-free future. One of the key developments has been infrastructure, including building fast highways linking major tourist destinations. While the speed at which we could travel was an undeniable benefit for us, I was constantly worried about the vast numbers of people (and in particular, children) walking, playing, and lounging by the roadside. The multitude of fast-moving vehicles posed clear safety issues to locals. Seemingly, the cultural and historical importance of roads in connecting communities and commerce had shaped both the orientation of villages (which stretched along the road, rather than deeper back or behind them) as well as how people interacted with them (as a place for playing, socializing, trading and the like). While such infrastructure improvements undoubtedly help communities transport and receive goods, foster tourism and the like, the stark replacement seemingly upended community and local norms and practices.

Development is key to alleviating poverty, improving health outcomes, and making progress on the other all the other crucial sustainable development goals. Sustainable tourism represents an important and apt opportunity to help contribute to sustainable and responsible development, particularly as opposed to antithetical activities popular throughout Africa such as trophy hunting (particularly “canned hunting”) and (irresponsible) mass tourism. Yet, throughout my travels I was struck by how many compromises (in my view) were being made for sustainability, be it the through taming of wildlife, prioritization of economic development at the expense of local customs, or many other examples. Others have expressed concerns too. Harvard hosts an International Sustainable Tourism Initiative, the Global Sustainable Tourism Council has set criteria and performance indicators around sustainable tourism, and an organization called the Travel Foundation has arisen to help bridge tourism with “greater benefits for people and the environment”.

Ecotourism is undoubtedly a more responsible and sustainable option that many other tourism choices. But, let us not overly romanticize positive impacts of such travel, nor grow complacent over the trade-offs, compromises, and potentially negative impacts that it may have.