How a human rights approach can help hotels improve their water management

Accom­mod­a­tion ser­vice pro­viders are expec­ted to hon­our the human right to water of all those around them. 

Hoteliers should view this respons­ib­il­ity not as a bur­den, but as an oppor­tun­ity to mean­ing­fully and con­tinu­ally engage with des­tin­a­tion stake­hold­ers while devel­op­ing more effi­cient and sus­tain­able water and waste man­age­ment systems.

It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight by act­iv­ist aca­dem­ics Yesaya San­dang and Stroma Cole.

[You too can write a “GT” Insight.]

Socio-eco­lo­gic­al con­flicts are increas­ing as des­tin­a­tions around the globe face water sup­ply pres­sures due to over­tour­ism, pop­u­la­tion growth, and cli­mate change. 

In every case, the poorest and most mar­gin­al­ised mem­bers of a host com­munity, such as women, chil­dren, and people with dis­ab­il­it­ies, suf­fer the most due to their unfair access to freshwater. 

We believe that a human rights approach could pro­gress ini­ti­at­ives that have chal­lenged hotels to reform their water man­age­ment sys­tems, such as the Sus­tain­able Hos­pit­al­ity Alli­ance water stew­ard­ship guidelines. 

Our approach is inspired by the UN Guid­ing Prin­ciples on Busi­ness and Human Rights, which provide the first glob­al stand­ard for pre­vent­ing and address­ing risks of adverse impacts on human rights asso­ci­ated with busi­ness activ­it­ies, includ­ing hotels and the human right to water (HRtW).

Don’t miss oth­er “Good Tour­ism” con­tent tagged with
“Water & waste management”

The UN’s defin­i­tion of the human right to water is hav­ing access to suf­fi­cient, safe, access­ible, and afford­able water.

Under the UN’s Guid­ing Prin­ciples, hotels have a respons­ib­il­ity to respect the human right to water irre­spect­ive of size, sec­tor, oper­a­tion­al con­text, own­er­ship and struc­ture, or geo­graph­ic­al area. 

Fur­ther­more, the Guid­ing Prin­ciples stress due dili­gence, espe­cially wherever water is scarce or of poor qual­ity, or where busi­ness activ­ity affects the water sup­ply of vul­ner­able or mar­gin­al­ised communities. 

This means that hotels must con­sider their impact on oth­er water users, includ­ing their right to water.

Our study, pub­lished in the Journ­al of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism, revealed the chal­lenges faced by hoteliers in their abil­ity or will­ing­ness to respect the HRtW, and why hotels do not vol­un­tar­ily adopt the UN’s Guid­ing Principles. 

Imped­ing factors include: 

• a lack of awareness;
• a lack of sub­stant­ive vol­un­tary schemes;
• the water tariff;
• the absence of data management; 
• return on invest­ment, profit, and pub­lic image being pri­or­it­ised over envir­on­ment­al con­sid­er­a­tions; and 
• inad­equate reg­u­la­tions and their enforcement. 

We also found that expect­ing hotels to vol­un­tar­ily respect the human right to water is not straightforward. 

It requires strong checks and bal­ances between pub­lic law and civil soci­ety gov­ernance to guide and to pres­sure hotels to improve their envir­on­ment­al accountability. 

Thus, sus­tain­able water use in des­tin­a­tions will require the com­pli­ment­ary respons­ib­il­it­ies of the State, hoteliers, and loc­al communities.

Tour­ism will nev­er be sus­tain­able if the human right to water is not respec­ted by tour­ism busi­nesses such as hotels. 

Hence, we sug­gest integ­rat­ing human rights to water impact assess­ments (HRWIA) into the exist­ing envir­on­ment­al impact assess­ment frame­work as a poten­tial solution. 

Organ­isa­tions such as the Insti­tute for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism have been advoc­at­ing for an integ­rated assess­ment where human rights (includ­ing the HRtW) are embed­ded with­in the scope of envir­on­ment, social, and health impact assessments. 

Don’t miss oth­er “Good Tour­ism” con­tent tagged with
“Hotels, resorts, and oth­er accommodation”

In our Journ­al of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism art­icle, we identi­fy the crit­ic­al areas of under­stand­ing for a hotel’s HRtW impact assess­ment, which, if con­duc­ted rig­or­ously, would enable engage­ment between hotels and their communities. 

As a res­ult, hotels could man­age water in col­lab­or­a­tion with loc­al com­munit­ies, whilst pre­par­ing and provid­ing for any remedi­ation through legit­im­ate processes.

Mean­ing­ful com­munity par­ti­cip­a­tion lies at the heart of sus­tain­able tour­ism. The UN’s Guid­ing Prin­ciples note the sig­ni­fic­ance of mean­ing­ful dia­logue with poten­tially impacted stake­hold­ers and pay­ing spe­cial atten­tion to dis­ad­vant­aged communities. 

Apply­ing this under­stand­ing to water-related impact assess­ments, loc­al com­munit­ies must be able to mean­ing­fully par­ti­cip­ate in shap­ing and influ­en­cing the assess­ment pro­cess itself, as well as the impact-related find­ings and decisions. 

In respect­ing the human right to water, hotel water man­age­ment con­sid­er­a­tions should not be con­fined to the domain and oper­a­tions of a hotel but need to be exten­ded out to all oth­er stake­hold­ers in a par­ti­cip­at­ory and con­tex­tu­al fashion. 

Authors’ dis­clos­ure: This piece is a short ver­sion of our art­icle “Using a human rights approach to improve hotels’ water use and sus­tain­ab­il­ity”, Yesaya San­dang & Stroma Cole (2022), Journ­al of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism, DOI: 10.1080/09669582.2022.2108041

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Fea­tured image (top of post): Hotels and the human right to water. Image by mrjn Pho­to­graphy (CC0) via Unsplash.

About the authors

Yesaya San­dang is a lec­turer at the Fac­ulty of Inter­dis­cip­lin­ary Stud­ies at Uni­versitas Kristen Satya Wacana, Indone­sia. He researches the inter­sec­tion of law, tour­ism, and human rights, par­tic­u­larly by using socio-leg­al approaches. Yesaya is also an act­iv­ist affil­i­ated with com­munity devel­op­ment and human rights NGOs in Indonesia.

Stroma Cole is a Read­er in tour­ism at the Uni­ver­sity of West­min­ster, Lon­don, UK. Dr Cole is also a Dir­ect­or at Equal­ity in Tour­ism. With interests in gender, respons­ible tour­ism devel­op­ment, human rights, and the links between tour­ism and the SDGs, she is an act­iv­ist research­er cri­tiquing the con­sequences of tour­ism devel­op­ment. Stroma is an Asso­ci­ate Edit­or for Annals of Tour­ism Research and is on the edit­or­i­al boards of Journ­al of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism and Tour­ism Geo­graph­ies.