LDC Export Diversification, Employment Generation and the 'Green Economy': What Roles for Tourism Linkages?

Pro-poor tourism is arguably one of the best green options for addressing LDC poverty, employment and economic diversification initiatives. Although often neglected as a serious policy option - and consequently most of its potential still remains untapped - tourism is the leading export for at least 11 LDCs, and the 2nd or 3rd largest export for another 11 or more. It is also a major source of new employment, especially for women, youth and the rural poor in general. While difficult to measure accurately, tourism's pro-poor impacts are directly related to the achieved level of inter- and intra-sectoral linkages. Taking export diversification, employment generation and the green economy in turn, the working paper analyzes feasible LDC alternatives, reaching the conclusion (within the limits of data availability) that - in contrast with the current overemphasis on agriculture and manufacturing - green tourism is demonstrably one of the areas of greatest current comparative advantage and development potential for the majority of LDCs, via its extensive upstream and downstream linkages/multiplier effects, employment-generating and poverty alleviation capacities, opportunities for export test marketing of new products, sustainability, and largely untapped export opportunities. An economy wide, primarily private-sector approach is an essential element for maximizing tourism benefits - including its multiple linkages with agriculture and manufacturing - together with a significant coordinating governmental role to minimize negative externalities. Unfortunately, there is no automatic guarantee that expanding tourism will significantly increase poverty alleviation or local employment generation: the necessary mechanisms must be explicitly included in tourism planning and implementation

Human Worth as Collateral

Human worth has taken on a surprising new role: that of market asset. Specifically, lenders in radically different contexts are using their borrowers’ human worth as collateral in loan transactions. The two examples of this new collateralization that I examine are credit card lending in the United States and microlending programs in the Third World. I conclude that the use of human worth in these two contexts is too similar to be coincidental. Rather, this new collateralization is a product of globalization. For those interested in the effect of law on globalization, this convergence in the market for credit teaches important lessons. In both the contexts I examine, the laws governing secured and unsecured lending fail to recognize human worth as collateral. For this reason, the new collateralization serves as a counter-example to the claimed centrality of the rule of law in economic development