By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo / Special to the BusinessMirror
THE Duterte administration has at least P80 million in funds to develop potential ecotourism sites and help support communities affected by the closure of select mining areas.
This was disclosed as Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo said she is ready to sit down with Environment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez on potential ecotourism areas.
In a text message to the BusinessMirror, Teo said the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (Tieza) can develop closed mining areas into ecotourism sites. “We are actually talking of ecotourism so we can help communities,” she said. The Department of Tourism (DOT) secretary chairs Tieza, an attached agency formerly known as the Philippine Tourism Authority.
Asked if exploratory talks have already been held with Lopez regarding potential ecotourism sites, Teo said, “Not yet. [But] I will sit down with her on this.”
Lopez recently announced the completion of a mining audit by her department, and said she was determined to close down several mines that have violated environmental laws and those in watershed areas. Watersheds help protect the supply of drinking water of local communities, as well as irrigation water for farms.
She added that the local communities in the closed mining areas will earn more if their sites are devoted to ecotourism activities.
Tieza COO Guiller Asido explained that “part of our mandate is to develop ecotourism projects. And we have identified this effort on ecotourism as a major initiative for 2017”.
He added the agency has a budget to develop ecotourism sites: “It’s 5 percent of travel-tax collections; that’s about P80 million. That’s an annual budget that we would like
to work on with the DENR [Department of Environmental and Natural Resources] and DOT. And with tourism’s multiplier effect, it will really help [the local communities that will be affected by the mining closures].”
A recent study by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) showed that travel and tourism directly supported 1.26 million jobs or 3.3 percent of total employment in the Philippines in 2015. “It is expected to rise by 3.1 percent in 2016 and rise by 2.4 per annum to 1.65 million jobs [3.3 percent of total employment] in 2026,” the WTTC added.
In 2015 travel and tourism’s total contribution to employment, “including jobs indirectly supported by the industry”, was 10.3 percent of total employment, or roughly 4 million jobs. “This is expected to rise by 3.5 percent in 2016 to 4,145,500 jobs and rise by 2.5 per annum to 5,288,000 jobs in 2026 [10.6 percent of total],” it also said. In contrast, data from the Mining and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) of the DENR indicated that mining and quarrying jobs accounted for only 0.6 percent of total employed persons in the Philippines, or 236,000.
According to the Barcelona Fields Studies Center, “Tourism not only creates jobs in the tertiary sector, it also encourages growth in the primary and secondary sectors of industry. This is known as the multiplier effect, which, in its simplest form, is how many times money spent by a tourist, circulates through a country’s economy.
“Money spent in a hotel helps to create jobs directly in the hotel, but it also creates jobs indirectly elsewhere in the economy. The hotel, for example, has to buy food from local farmers, who may spend some of this money on fertilizer or clothes. The demand for local products increases as tourists often buy souvenirs, which increases secondary employment.”
The DOT is targeting a 13.2-percent share in total employment for tourism in 2017. “And the number of poor beneficiaries [Filipinos living below the poverty line] as target is 471,631,” the Tieza chief said.
While some of the mining areas to be closed are watershed areas, Tieza still believes it is still feasible to turn them into ecotourism sites. “It’s a matter of agreeing with the DENR on what is the proper framework and guideline to be observed in identifying the appropriate project. There are international standards, as well, [that can be followed in
developing watershed areas into ecotourism sites],” Asido pointed out.
The WTTC study also showed that travel and tourism directly contributed about P570 billion to the Philippine economy as expressed in the GDP in 2015. This was equivalent to 4.2 percent of the GDP.
The same study showed that the total contribution of travel and tourism to the country’s GDP was P1.43 trillion in 2015, or 10.6 percent of GDP. “It is forecast to rise by 6.6 percent in 2016, and to rise by 5.4 percent per annum to P2,590 billion [11.2 percent of GDP] in 2026.”
The mining industry, on the other hand, contributed only 0.6 percent of the GDP in 2015, with its gross value added at current prices estimated at some P81 billion.
WTTC is an international organization of travel industry executives promoting travel and tourism worldwide. It regularly issues reports on the impact of tourism on the global economy, as well as the economies of different countries.
Image credits: Angie Metin/ACB