The New Tourists

Question: what do the international community, the UN, and a mountain climber have in common? Answer: they have a compulsive attraction for summits.

The only difference is that for some, success is measured in meters; for others by the number of participating statesmen. But be it the exhausted athlete who reaches the summit of the Himalayas or the ecstatic international civil servant who survives his umpteenth summit on children, poverty or the environment, both share the same longing: “For when the next summit?”

It is important that the world leaders meet, and, why not, use the occasion to discuss the problems of our planet; but, isn’t there a more efficient way to spend public money? Because at the end of the day, what do we get from all these touristico-diplomatic jamborees, but an umpteenth ministerial declaration which can be added to the overflowing trash cans of contemporary history.

One suggestion: why not have the participants pay for the organisation of future summits? And then, if the summit is on poverty, it could take place in a slum. If on the environment, it would be on a polluted site. And if on child labour, then move it to a factory. In many cases, it would provide heads of state and administrators with a reality check.

Editor-in-Chief, Jean Michel Jakobowicz