Globally, billions of people cannot rely on access to critical infrastructure: electricity, clean water & basic sanitation, health, phone services and internet connection. To develop, societies require resilient facilities, economic growth and jobs, research, new technology and skills to reduce inequalities. Manufacturing is vital for developing. Tourism can help deliver such development, locally, sustainably.

Sustainable development goal SDG 9 infrastructure, industry & innovation

Sustainable development goal SDG 9 infrastructure, industry & innovation

Goal 9 of the UN 17 Global Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is:

SDG #9 “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.”

Progress on Sustainable Development Goal 9 Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure

  • Growing: Mass transport, renewable energy and information and communication technologies are becoming ever more important.

  • 97% of global population live within reach of a mobile cellular signal, and 93% live within reach of a mobile-broadband signal.

  • 79% mobile coverage in Least Developed Countries in 2019, grown from 51% in 2015, however, less than 1 in 5 use the Internet.

  • 46% /4 billion people still do not have access to the Internet: 90% from Less Developed Countries. This digital divide is due to cost and skills, and crucial for equal access to information and knowledge, to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.

  • 6%: Global decline in manufacturing, due to lockdowns. In LDCs, the share of manufacturing in GDP increased from 10% in 2010 to 12.4% in 2019. However, the rate of growth is too slow to reach the target of doubling industry’s share in GDP by 2030.

  • $132: Manufacturing value added per capita in LDCs in 2019, lagging far behind Europe and Northern America, at $4,856.

  • Small and Medium Enterprises, with limited resources, do not have the capacity to deal with unexpected shocks, such as the Covid crisis, without help from governments, especially to increase competitiveness and integrate into local and global value chains.

  • $2.2 trillion: global investment in R&D in 2017, growing vs $1.4 trillion in 2019 - but still not enough?

  • 1.7%: Investment in R&D as a proportion of GDP from 2015, havng increased from 1.5 per cent in 2000, but less than 1% in LDCs.

  • 47.6%: global investment in R&D in Europe and Northern America in 2017 vs 40.4% for Eastern and South-Eastern Asia quickly catching up from 22.6% in 2000; however in relative terms, the proportion of global GDP invested lags in sub-Saharan Africa & LDCs.

  • 22.9%: small-scale industries in sub-Saharan Africa received loans or lines of credit, vs almost half in Latin America and the Caribbean.

  • < 30% of agricultural products in developing countries undergo industrial processsing, compared to 98% in high income countries.

  • $152.2 billion: Developing countries’ investment in renewable energies in 2019, outpacing $130 billion for developed countries.

  • Investments in research and development need to accelerate, despite progress, in part to cope with COVID-19.

The Impact of Covid on SDG 9 Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure

  • The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the critical nature of much infrastructure and the urgent need for its resilience.

  • $434 billion per year: the additional investment required according to The Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific to make infrastructure disaster- and climate change-resilient, more in some subregions such as Small Island Developing States.

  • The pandemic hit already-slowing manufacturing industries, causing disruptions in global value chains and the supply of products.

  • Covid also hit aviation hard, a driver of economic development, impacting trade, closing 100% destinations, travel demand near zero.

  • Better access to financial services is urgently needed for small-scale industries, major sources of employment and central to income-generation and poverty alleviation, to resuscitate the global economy.

  • The crisis has accelerated digitalization of many businesses and services, including teleworking, video conferencing, access to healthcare, education and essential goods and services ecommerce.

  • Covid-19 has also highlighted the need for more investment in the pharmaceutical industry and in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, which can assist in developing drugs and vaccines and in managing health-related services and resources.

  • The World Bank estimates that developing countries need to invest 4.5% of GDP to achieve the SDGs whilst limiting global warming.

Chumbe Island Tanzania Solar water heater

Chumbe Island Tanzania Solar water heater

Challenges of SDG9, Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure

What is Infrastructure?

Infrastructure provides the basic physical facilities essential to business and society, enabling basic needs to be met and access to information and learning for improving knowledge and productivity.

Infrastructure can include public services such as water, energy, waste, irrigation, and communications including telephone and internet. It can also be more tangible, such as transport, roads and bridges, or education establishments, systems and standards.

Often infrastructure may be aged in need of replacing or updating, to support better efficiency or reliability, to enable business or access to basic needs such as education and healthcare. Pre-empting infrastructure breakdown or resource inefficiency may require early and smart investment, particularly if development lead times are long.
    
Climate change is also adding extra pressures and creating the need for more resilient infrastructure to cope with changing weather patterns, such as extreme heats, floods and storms. Governments are looking to 'climate-proofing' through early investment for climate resilience, reducing ultimate costs.

What is Innovation?

Innovation expands technological capabilities and leads to the development of new skills. Technological progress is key to finding lasting solutions to both economic and environmental challenges, such as providing new jobs and promoting energy efficiency, and can open new markets and opportunities for better growth, leading to more sustainability. Eg. free video conferencing has reduced business air miles.

What is Industry?

Industry is the part of economy concerned with production of goods. Industrial output is a component of the GDP of a nation. It includes mining and extraction sectors, fuels and fertilisers.

Feed and food production is excluded, counted with farming as agricultural output: the systematic raising of plants and animals.
Service provision is also excluded: non-material economic activity equivalent of goods that does not result in physical ownership but which create benefits, such as financial services and digital technologies.

Of world GDP ($127.8 trillion, purchasing power parity), industry is 30.0%, services 63.0% and agriculture 6.4% (World Factbook, CIA, 2017).

Manufacturing is an important employer, accounting for around 16% of the world’s workforce. It includes automobile, chemical, machinery, electrical and electronics, metal, aviation, pharmaceutical and medical equipment, and more.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the largest job creators, making up over 90% of business worldwide and 50-60% of employment (UN SDGs).

Industrialisation drives economic growth and job creation, reducing income inequality.  However, greater investment is needed to build required infrastructure in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of the world to ensure growth.

Jicaro Island Ecolodge, Nicaragua - owner Karen with building crew and dog!

Jicaro Island Ecolodge, Nicaragua - owner Karen with building crew and dog!

What's it got to do with Tourism?

Tourism can reach into the extremities of a country other industries cannot.

Tourism is thus dependent on, but also depended upon, infrastructure for development.

It not only relies on good public and privately supplied infrastructure and an innovative environment for its services to be delivered, but can also incentivise governments to upgrade infrastructure as a means of attracting tourism and other sources of foreign investment, in size, scale, efficiency and sustainability.

This can facilitate further sustainable industrialization, necessary for economic growth, development and innovation. Tourism can thus support inequalities and disadvantaged countries in a way other industries cannot.

Significant investment is needed in the Least Developed Countries to boost technological progress and economic growth. Innovation and upgrading infrastructure such as in transport, energy and water can also support other industries to be more sustainable, with increasingly efficient use of resources and environmentally sound technologies and processes.

RSC water supply for community in Malawi

RSC water supply for community in Malawi

  • SEED Madagascar has created incredible water and sanitation infrastructure for rainwater harvesting and latrines.

Kanzi Academy, funded by Campi ya Kanzi/maasai wilderness conservation trust

Kanzi Academy, funded by Campi ya Kanzi/maasai wilderness conservation trust

  • In Malawi, RSC focus on increasing business linkages between people from low-income communities and tourism-industry actors for the positive impacts of tourism on poverty. You can undertake global development workshops in social enterprise such paper-making and water sanitation.

The tourism sector includes:

  • Transportation: such as cruise ships, yachts, airlines, railways, roads, buses and taxis.

  • Hospitality: including accommodation.

  • Entertainment and leisure: such as casinos, amusement parks, shopping malls and theatre.

Nikoi Island Indonesia OrangLaut crystal necklaces

Nikoi Island Indonesia OrangLaut crystal necklaces

As well as building their tourism services,

  • Luca Belpietro, founder of Campi ya Kanzi, built the lodge from scratch in conjunction with the local Maasai, teaching them to be carpenters, masons, and later waiters, cooks, mechanics, guides for the now-Maasai-run community lodge.

  • Nikoi’s The Island Foundation has established a retail brand (Kura Kura) to help sell traditional arts and crafts, plus helped establish several local businesses, such as car hire and alang-alang (ylang ylang) supplier for grass roofs, beneficial to the community and tourism operations.

Stitch St Luce, a project set up by SEED Madagascar

Stitch St Luce, a project set up by SEED Madagascar

  • SEED Madagascar set up Stitch St Luce as a project, now a thriving independent international business, training women in producing and selling high quality embroidered products, language and business skills for sustainable livelihoods. The products take inspiration from the diverse local wildlife and environment, linking consumer demand to local desire for conservation.

  • Lapa Rios have constructed and maintain a suspension (walking) bridge to cross the Carbonera River and the road from Puerto Jimenez as well as organise the Osa Peninsula recycling centre & dump.

 

World Travel &amp; tourism council: Travel &amp; tourism global economic impact &amp; issues 2017 - march 2017. All rights reserved

World Travel & tourism council: Travel & tourism global economic impact & issues 2017 - march 2017. All rights reserved

The Impact of Tourism on World Industry GDP

Directly, travellers pay into airlines, accommodation, car hire, entertainments, restaurants, shopping, sports, tour operators, transportation, travel agents…

Indirectly, their supply chains are brought together to create tourism goods and services: design, food, materials, maintenance, marketing, staff, utilities…

All that demand creates jobs and employment which pay income and taxes.

Induced impacts includes those which are demanded as a result of those jobs and income: how the wider industry benefits ultimately from money being in tourism: supporting wide-ranging sectors such as energy, food, agriculture, retail, finance, education and manufacturing. There is an enormous indirect impact by tourism to non-tourism industry economic contribution.

Campi ya Kanzi Kenya Energy battery

Campi ya Kanzi Kenya Energy battery

Overtourism

Looking at the number of international visitors compared to local population can provide an indicator of the impact tourism may have on the destination. For example, in Iceland in 2018, overnight international tourism arrivals outnumbered the resident population by a ratio of 5.4:1. The ratio was highest in Andorra (37:1), Macao (26:1) and British Virgin Islands.

Continued strong growth in tourism hotspots may squeeze infrastructure capacity and lead to environmental and societal pressures if not managed responsibly – as witnessed in many worldwide destinations, such as in cities like Venice, Barcelona and US National Parks.

The top ten countries for tourism in GDP terms in 2019 were:  United States, China, Japan, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Mexico and Indoa. By 2027, China is expected to top the list, with India in 4th place. That said, natural disasters, politics and currency fluctuations can strongly affect tourism.

Other countries see the fastest grwoth, due to factors such as more open borders, infrastructure investment, and promotional efforts, such as in 2019: Saudi Arabia, Kyrgyzstan, Tunisia, Sierra Leone, Uzbekistan, Greece, Mongolia, Kuwait and Rwanda.

Forecast

Jicaro Island Ecolodge Nicaragua Karen at local producers

Jicaro Island Ecolodge Nicaragua Karen at local producers

Prior to Covid, by 2027 Travel & Tourism GDP was expected to contribute 11.4% of global GDP, and support 1 in 9 of all global jobs, or 23% of total global net job creation over the next decade. It is expected to outperform the global economy and increase its share of global economic activity across GDP, employment, exports and investment, compared to sectors such as telecoms, retail, finance and manufacturing. Covid’s long impact remains to be seen.

Such gowth will see increased and ongoing investment into the supporting goods and service for tourism infrastructure and facilities, innovation in research and development of new technology and industrialisation driving economic growth and job creation, reducing income inequality and helping end poverty, water shortage and energy poverty.

Links with the other Sustainable Development Goals

Industry, infrastructure and innovation are core requirements to help solve the world's major challenges, and key to travel and tourism:

Goal 1 - End Poverty: Poverty alleviation may be constrained by investment and support for infrastructure and development.

Goal 2 - Zero hunger: Access to food and agricultural productivity may be improved by access to technology, industry and infrastructure.

Goal 3 - Health & Well-Being: Covid has shown the importance of investment in innovation and infrastructure for health services.

Goal 4 - Quality Education: requires investment in schools' construction, maintenance, furniture, facilities, equipment and technology.

Goal 5 - Gender Equality - inclusive industrialisation means for everyone. All too often are women marginalised, eg. less funded.

Goal 6 - Access to affordable, safe and sustainable water and sanitation requires adequate infrastructure and facilities.

Goal 7 - Access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy can be catalyzed bytourism's innovation for cost incentive.

Goal 8 - Sustained, inclusive & sustainable economic growth, full & productive employment especially in SMEs as a source of innovation.

Goal 10 - Reduced inequalities between countries.

Goal 11 - Inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable settlements

Goal 12 - Sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 13 - Climate change: adverse weather patterns can destroy and damage infrastructure.

Goal 14 - Life under water and marine conservation is key to fishing and coastal area industry.

Goal 15 - Life on land: innovation in industry can be transposed to conservation infrastructure, such as drone technology fighting poaching.

Goal 16 - Peace & Justice: Innovation & regeneration of infrastructure and industry are vital to post-conflict situations for growth.

Goal 17 - Partnerships for the Goals: Working with others can support faster, more efficient innovation and industrialisation, eg. green fuels.