Sustainable Tourism Law

440 SUSTAINABLE TOURISM LAW II. HOUSING RIGHT AS A SUSTAINABILITY ISSUE Sustainability is one of the most important areas regulated through soft law legal instruments on tourism. It is important to study if the Right to housing has been treated, on international tourism law, as a sustainability issue and to determine its level of protection on those legal documents. Sustainability and sustainable development are, both in general and on tourism scientific areas, seen basically as a relationship between man and the environment 9 . However, the importance of tourism and its role on the social and economic wellbeing are underlined, both in tandem with the development of the resident communities 10 . The Charter for SustainableTourism 11 is one of the fundamental international soft law instruments on sustainable tourism. From this document we must highlight its articles 1., 4., 8 and 9., where it is established that: “1. Tourism development shall be based on criteria of sustainability, which means that it must be ecologically bearable in the long term, economically viable, as well as ethically and socially equitable for the local communities. Sustainable development is a guided process which envisages global management of resources so as to ensure their viability, thus enabling our natural and cultural capital to be preserved. As a powerful instrument of development, tourism can and should participate actively in the sustainable development strategy. A requirement of sound management of tourism is that the sustainability of the resources on which it depends must be guaranteed.” “4. The active contribution of tourism to sustainable development necessarily presupposes the solidarity, mutual respect, and participation of all the actors implicated in the process, especially those indigenous to the locality. Said solidarity, mutual respect and participation must be based on efficient cooperation mechanisms at all levels: local, national, regional and international” “8. All options for tourism development must serve effectively to improve the quality of life of all people and must entail a positive effect and inter-relation as regards sociocultural identify.” “9. Governments and authorities shall promote actions for integrating the planning of tourism with environmental NGOs and local communities to achieve sustainable development”. Another, and maybe the most important soft law international instrument on tourism law is the Global Code for Ethics on Tourism, approved in 1999, 9 Carlo, A., “Sustainable Tourism in Practice: Promoting or Perverting the Quest for a Sustainable Development?”, Sustainability 2014, 6, pp. 2562-2583; Lafferty, W.M., Langhelle, O., Eds. Towards Sustainable Development: The Goals of Development–And the Conditions of Sustainability; Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press: Indianapolis, IN, USA, 1998. 10 Rukuižienė, R., “Sustainable Tourism Development Implication to Local Economy”, Regional Formation and Development Studies, No. 3 (14), p.171; UNWTO Annual Report 2011, p.36. 11 Approved on the World Conference on Sustainable Tourism, meeting in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain, on 27-28 April 1995.