# Peace and Prosperity

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-18 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Louis Damore, Peace and Prosperity, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> PEACE AND PROSPERITY
> 
> Mr Louis Damore
> 
> © EBBF, 2001
> 
> Friday 26 – 10 – 2001
> 
> This is a transcript of the lecture as it was presented at the conference
> and has not been edited for content or grammar.
> 
> *****
> 
> I’m very happy to be with you today and would like to express my appreciation for your
> invitation to speak with you. The late … Mr Fuller felt that the last fifteen years of the
> twentieth century would be a period when humankind would be taking its final exam. One
> wonders with the events of September 11th and since whether but Mr Fuller would give us a
> passing or failing greed.
> 
> The 1997 State of the World report of the World Watch Institute concluded that humanity is
> facing a triple security crisis. The first being the repercussions of social inequities, the second
> the effects of environmental decline, and thirdly the dangers arising out of an unchecked arms
> proliferation that is a direct legacy of the cold war.
> 
> Regarding the first issue, social inequities, scientists believe that human life began in Africa
> some five million years ago. It has taken these five million years to nineteen hundred – the
> start of the twenty first century - to reach a world population of one point six billion people.
> We will be adding that same number of people to the face of the earth in just the next fifteen
> to twenty years reaching a total of seven point six billion people. Ninety per cent of this
> growth will be in developing countries. Africa, with the highest rate of population growth of
> any region, will have approximately thirty per cent of this total growth – or an additional five
> hundred million people. In 1900 there were fewer than one hundred million people in Africa.
> In one hundred years, at the start of the twenty first century, that number has grown eight fold
> to eight hundred million, and in another fifteen to twenty years will be one point three billion
> people. Compounding this disparity and population growth between developed and
> developing nations there’s an ever-growing economic gap between the have and have-not
> regions of the world. David Landis, in his 1999 book ‘The Wealth and Poverty of Nations’,
> points out that the ratio of income per capita in one of the richest nations in the world – lets
> say Switzerland, and the poorest non-industrial nation, is currently four hundred to one. Some
> two hundred and fifty years ago that same ratio was five to one. There are six billion people in
> the world at the start of the century, nearly one half are living on two dollars a day, and one
> point three billion of this half of humanity is living on one dollar a day.
> 
> As early as 1960, Lester B Pearson, then president of the U.N general assembly and formally
> a Prime Minister of Canada, warned that no planet could survive half slave, half free, half
> engulfed in misery, half careening to the joys of an almost unlimited consumption. Neither
> our ecology nor morality could survive such contrasts.
> 
> The 1995 World Social Summit in Copenhagen acknowledged that poverty, unemployment,
> and social disintegration are closely linked to issues of peace and security. The summit
> concluded that there is an urgent need for a new global commitment, a global social compact
> to reduce deep inequities that breed explosive social conditions, fuel ethnic antagonisms, and
> drive environmental decline.
> 
> The second issue being environmental degradation; Forests are shrinking, water tables are
> falling, soils are eroding, deserts are expanding, wetlands are disappearing, fisheries are
> collapsing, rage lands are deteriorating, reefs are dying, and plant and animal species are
> disappearing. As world population continues to expand at a rate of nearly ninety million
> people a year - the entire population of Africa in 1900 – each day we push an estimated one
> hundred and fifty plant and animal species into extinction. We produce chemicals that destroy
> the ozone layer exposing ourselves and other species to harmful solar radiation. We put
> chemicals into the air, water and soil that we turn to poisonous and cause global warming. I
> was wondering as I was coming into Holland the measures they are beginning to take with
> regards the end of Holland if the ocean begins to rise. We clear an estimated eleven million
> acres of tropical forest each year, and at the same time allow more than a billion people to live
> in conditions of extreme poverty and thirty five thousand children to die each day from
> preventable diseases.
> 
> The third issue, arms proliferation; we continue to spend more than eight hundred billion
> dollars a year on defence. The good news is that that’s dropped from one point three billion at
> the height of the cold war. But that is not counting the proliferation of arms sales to terrorists,
> which there is no way of doing a counting of. The US military budget alone, for 2001, was
> more than three hundred billion dollars – and that is six times greater than Russia, which has
> the second largest budget, seven times greater than China, which has the third largest budget.
> President Dwight D Eisenhower, himself a decorated five star general of World War Two
> fame, said:
> 
> “Every gun that is made, every war ship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final
> sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
> The world in arms is not spending money alone, it is spending the sweat of its labourers, the
> genius of its scientist, and the hopes of its children.”
> 
> The international community is addressing these issues in every nation. There are emerging
> organisations and individuals working for peace, justice, human rights and a healthy
> environment. Houseman’s Peace Directory lists over three thousand such groups in one
> hundred and fifty nations. Within this context, the global tourism industry has a key role to
> play. International tourism arrivals in 2000 approached seven hundred million people, while
> receipts were nearly five hundred billion dollars representing more than eight per cent of
> world exports in goods and services. When you add in domestic tourism to all of that the total
> for the travel and tourism industry is about four trillion dollars. Travel and tourism is now the
> leading sector of the international trade and services and probably the most rapidly growing
> sector in international trade. Tourism is already significant and growing in many developing
> countries. In 1950 all but three per cent of international arrivals were in Europe and North
> America. By 1999, in some fifty years, this per cent age has in creased to thirty eight per cent
> with increase in marketures to developing countries and countries in transition. The World
> Tourism Organisation forecasts that international tourism arrivals will reach one point six
> billion in the year 2020. The growing preference for new forms of tourism related to nature,
> wildlife, rural tourism, community tourism, and cultural tourism, the outlook for continued
> growth in developing countries is ve ry promising. Tourism provides one of the few options to
> diversify the economies of developing nations. Many of these nations are rich in bio-diversity
> and cultural assets, which offer opportunities for important segments of the tourism industry
> including nature based tourism, cultural tourism, rural and community based tourism.
> Tourism is human resource intensive, creating more jobs each year than any other industry; it
> offers a range of entrepreneurial opportunities for micro-enterprise, as well as small and
> medium sized enterprise and community co-operatives. It offers opportunities for women,
> youth and indigenous peoples, from unskilled to skilled and managerial positions. It offers
> them opportunity to learn new languages, acquire new skills and enter a new realm of job
> opportunities and advancement. Many craftsmen find their traditional forms of weaving;
> metalworking and woodcarving can be used profitably as a result of the tourism industry. Art
> forms such as music and dance are also sustained through tourism, and through tourism these
> art forms and skills are passed on with pride to succeeding generations. Tourism can also help
> reduce the flows of urban migration, which is one of key issues facing the world - the growth
> in urban population, particularly in developing countries. It can do this through it’s
> opportunities for rural and community economic development. There are also increased
> efforts to link tourism to other industry sectors, particularly agriculture which helps to
> compensate for the decline in global commodity prices. And tourism, properly managed, can
> contribute to even helping the natural environment and the preservation of bio-diversity. Over
> the years while I was in Canada, I got to know Canada’s environmental ambassador, Arthur
> Kenpo. Canada took a lead role in developing the biodiversity convention for the 1992 world
> summit and Arthur Kenpo plated a key part in that. And in our discussions he would
> always say to me that he felt eco-tourism was the one hope for protecting biodiversity in
> developing nations.
> The linkages in tourism and peace were recently summarised by Pope John Paul II:
> 
> “Tourism puts us in touch with other ways of living, other religions and other perceptions of
> the world and it’s history. This helps people to discover themselves and others both as
> individuals and as communities. Immersed in the vast history of humanity, heirs to and
> responsible for a universe that is both familiar and strange. This generates a new vision of
> others that frees us from the risk of being closed in on ourselves.”
> 
> The issues that I outlined at the start of my talk did not suddenly appear in the 1990’s or the
> 1980’s. As my quote from Lester B Pearson indicated, the issues of social inequity were there
> to be seen in 1960 and they increased rather than diminished. As early as 1967 Rachel
> Carson sounded the alert on environmental issues with her book ‘Silent Spring’. The club of
> Rome warned us of limits to growth with its milestone study of 1970. And General
> Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of an unchecked military industrial complex as early as
> the 1950’s.
> 
> The time has come, and long over due, for a peace industry complex, and it is encouraging to
> see the work being done by the EBBF through conferences such as these and the publications
> evident in your display out front. In his address to you last year, William Walker framed his
> remarks with a quote from Leo Tolstoy:
> 
> “The soul meaning of life is to serve humanity.”
> 
> What better statement can we have tha n this as the guiding principal for a global peace
> industry complex?
> 
> The International Institute for Peace Through Tourism was formed in 1986, the U.N
> international year of peace. It was formed in response to issues such as we’ve talked about
> earlier and also the growing tensions in the 1980’s between the East and West, as well in the
> 1980’s there was a very serious growth in terrorism. The institute evolved out of research that
> my consulting firm was doing for Canadian clients over the period of ten years on the future
> of tourism. When I first started sowing the seeds for an international conference on peace
> through tourism the response from the industry leaders in Canada was ‘what tourism got to do
> with peace? - And peace is the governments job’ All of that changed in late 1985/86 with the
> peaking of terrorism - much of it aimed at the tourism industry. Most of you will remember
> the hi-jackings of aeroplanes, the O’ Cally Laurel cruise ship seizure; airport attacks in Rome
> and Vienna, and other terrorist incidents. The same industry leaders suddenly had a ‘road to
> Damascus’ enlightenment – they realised the connection of peace and tourism. Without peace
> there is no tourism, and in terms of the theme of this conference without peace there cannot be
> prosperity.
> 
> Around the world in 1986 tourism declined by a third. That’s about the same drop that
> occurred after September 11th . That’s the same kind of drop that occurred after the gulf war.
> This global impact on tourism combined with the U.N declaration of 1986 as the international
> year of peace resulted in the tourism industry association of Canada unanimously endorsing
> the idea of an international conference on tourism and peace at their annual general meeting in
> February 1986. And the international institute for peace through tourism was born a few
> months later. The vision with that birth was the vision of tourism as a global peace industry
> – an industry that supports and promotes the belief that every traveller is potentially an
> ambassador for peace. The first global conference, ‘Tourism: A Global Force for Peace’, was
> held two years later in Vancouver, British Columbia, with eight hundred participants coming
> from sixty seven countries. The President of Iceland, who just that previous year had hosted
> the Reykjavik Summit, was the honorary chairperson. And the opening ceremony featured
> videotaped messages from President Regan and Pope John Paul II. The conference served to
> create awareness to the potential of tourism, to contribute to mutual understanding among
> peoples, international co-operation among nations. Even in the middle east, not currently, but
> prior to the uprising that we saw beginning in September of last year, ministers of tourism
> from Palestine authority, Jordan, Israel ad Egypt would stand together in media conferences,
> at for example the world travel market, and together stand in solidarity to promote tourism to
> the region rather than their individual countries. Tourism, more than any other industry, is an
> industry where countries can collaborate not only on peace but also on environmental issues -
> as we see in the Caribbean Tourism Organisation does all lot in this area and other
> organisations such as Pacific-Asia Travel Association, European travel commission. It also
> can contribute to an improved environment, both built and natural. Tourism in many places –
> Costa Rica for one, which lost about half of its rainforest in a period of twenty years
> following which the deputy minister of environment, began to introduce eco-tourism and he’s
> been able to save the rest of that Costa Rican rainforest. And there are also contributes to an
> improved built environment. Tourism is the economic engine that drives museums and
> cultural events and theatre and what have you. It does this in such a way that it not only
> benefits the tourists, but the residents of those cities. And in 1988 the concept of sustainable
> development was a new concept just introduced by Jude Brumplin with her global
> commission and the report that resulted - ‘our common future’ – and we talked about tourism
> could make in sustainable development in that year.
> 
> Two subsequent global conferences in Montreal in 1994 and Glasgow 1999, each highlighted
> success stories and examples of best practice that demonstrated these potentialities of tourism.
> They were success stories that came from the private sector, the public sector and from
> NGO’s from the local level to the na tional level and the international level.
> With the third global conference the institute began an emphasis on partnering and steps were
> taken to form four international networks among the educators, persons interested in rural and
> community based tourism, indigenous tourism, and spirituality in tourism. Steps were also
> taken to form a global coalition of partners for world peace through tourism. With the
> founding partner committed to a millennium project that contributes to the vision of tourism
> as a global peace industry, in between conferences, I IPT’ed the institute, developed the
> worlds first code of ethics and guidelines for sustainable tourism – these were prepared for
> Canadian tourism industry shortly following the Rio summit in 1992. As well we conducted
> an international survey for the United Nations environment program on the state of the art of
> the codes of conduct tourism and environment, and also developed guidelines for some
> seventeen industry sectors that became the green leaf program of the Pacific –Asia Travel
> Association. As part of Canada’s one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary as a nation, the
> institute implemented a ‘Peace Parts Across Canada’ project. Some four hundred cities and
> towns dedicated a part of peace, each with a peace grove of twelve trees as a symbolic link to
> one another and this symbol of hope for the future. All four hundred of these parks were
> dedicated on the 8th of October at noon as a peace keeping monument honouring world peace
> keepers was unveiled in Canada’s capital, Ottawa.
> 
> The three global conferences that I mentioned, these projects together with a series of smaller
> work shops and conferences served as the foundations for the first global summit on Peace
> Through Tourism which was held in Oman, Jordan last November the 8th – 11th . His Majesty
> King Abdullah was honorary chair of that summit which honoured the legacy of King
> Hussein as a peacemaker and also served as a demonstration of support by the worlds largest
> industry for a continuation of the peace process in the Middle East and other regions of the
> world. Some outcomes included ratification of the Oman declaration by the participants from
> some sixty countries, which included twenty-two chief executive officers, and sixteen
> ministers of tourism. The Oman declaration has since been incorporated as an official U.N
> document. Other outcomes included four international networks (that I mentioned earlier) of
> coalition of partners for world peace through tourism with more than twenty international
> partners, and the launch of a global peace parks project from Bethany, beyond the Jordan, site
> of Christ’s baptism, and that was done on the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, on the
> eleventh month of the first year of the millennium.
> 
> In two weeks, at the world travel market in London, we will be announcing the second global
> summit on peace through tourism, which will be in Geneva on October 13th – 16th next year.
> As the first global summit was in support of the U.N. international year for the culture of
> peace, the second global summit will be in support of the U.N decade of peace of non-
> violence for the children of the world. Again, we have several smaller conferences and
> workshops leading up to the second global summit. The first two we’ve already implemented.
> One was a workshop in Jamaica on community-based tourism, and the second is a spirituality
> in tourism conference in a CZ that Steve mentioned. It is interesting to know that in a
> connection with spirituality that Daghammer Showeled said:
> 
> “We will never have peace in the world until we have a spiritual renaissance.”
> 
> A third conference between Greek and Turkish travel executives is planned in April of next
> year. This will be expanded to include Cyprus travel executives, and our aim is to harness the
> sprit of the Olympics, which will be taking place in 2004, to improve understanding within
> the region.
> I would like to close with the wise words of Muhat Mu Ghandi. He said:
> 
> “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”
> 
> Within that context, and within that spirit, we might each try to be more God like, as
> expressed in a message that I recently came across my screen:
> 
> ‘What is God like?
> God is like general electric – He lights your path.
> God is a little like bear aspirin – he works wonders.
> God is a little like Hallmark cards – He cares enough to send the very best.
> God is a little like Alberto V05 hairspray – He holds through all kinds of weather.
> God is a little like Scotch tape – you don’t see Him, but you know He’s there.
> God is a little like the copper-top battery – nothing can out last Him.
> God is a little like American Express - … (inaudible)’
> 
> Ladies and Gentlemen thank you very much, and God bless you all.
> 
> (Questions from audience)
> 
> “I’m always looking for the … part so what you’ve showed just now, the … and the … part of
> tourism. I also see the other part as information for the ecological part, but also the cultural
> part, and in Holland there are some TV shows showing what is going on in other countries in
> holidays, and what’s shocking to me is to see how our culture is … to the other culture instead
> of learning, just moving the other culture away and just putting your own one. So how do you
> deal with this?”
> 
> I think there’s a very, very significant need for education and this is one of the reasons why
> we focused on developing an educational network to begin getting appreciation to these
> particular issues particular to what you’ve just described. And travelling to another country
> with a sense of humility and this probably sometime in the next couple of days (maybe you’ve
> already begun to discuss it), but what is prosperity? Yes, we have material prosperity in the
> western world, but you have all sorts of these instant millionaires in the United States –
> probably in Europe as well – as a result o the information and computer era that began in the
> 1990’s and many of these instant millionaires have ended up in psychological consultations
> with therapists – they’ve got all this money, but they still are not happy. I don’t know if any of
> you remember it – when I was growing up there was a very popular song by Peggy Lee – ‘Is
> that all there is?’ and that’s the realisation you come to when you’ve got everything you could
> possibly want materialistically but you still don’t have that sense of happiness, satisfaction,
> fulfilment, a sense of inner peace, a sense that you’re doing something that’s significant. Our
> spirituality and tourism conference, as Steve just mentioned, was held in CZ, and I think
> every one should go to CZ. Not only it’s a Unesco world heritage site, but to learn about the
> life of Saint Francis. And here’s a man who gave his life to others, had a tremendous respect
> and reverence for the environment, and he lived in joy and he gained this sense that happiness
> can come more from simplicity than it can from material acquisition. It can’t come more form
> the statement that William gave us last year from Tolstoy, that fulfilment comes from serving
> others. There was a survey that was done by Fortune magazine about five or six years ago and
> it surveyed mangers from warehouse manger level to top executive managers. And what they
> found was the main motivation for these managers was an opportunity to make a contribution
> to society – beyond being able to pay their mortgage and take care of their family and children
> they really would like to fell they were making a contribution to society and also that they
> were growing as a person in their careers, intellectually and what have you. So I think as we
> talk about, and I’m sure you’ve talked about in past conferences, what is prosperity? We need
> to return to our inner beings, our inner selves. Everyone, when you begin talking about peace,
> and as the hymn says - ‘let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me’ – that’s where it
> begins and what gives us that inner satisfaction and inner joy – and increasingly you find it
> isn’t materialism. Addressing your question; there’s so many people that go to developing
> countries to give aid or for whatever reason, and these people living in abject poverty they
> find to be the most giving people they’ve ever met, and they’re still happy, and what little
> they have they will share with you. And this is something I
> Saw as a young marine. I was in the Philippines – people living in huts and so on, and they
> were just so happy – particularly the children. So I think we can learn something from them
> and this is something we all have to educate to come to this realisation.
> 
> (Question)
> 
> “I don’t know how the conversation got around, specifically with the U.S, and refers to the
> tourism industry as a universal industry and as you know here in… It’s a booming
> industry…(long audible part)…. So the lack of sensitivity over sincerity of the tourist,
> depends on the tourist and the country he’s coming from, and he can see that everywhere –
> it’s not the prerogative of the Americans actually, and you just go tot Spain and have a look
> around you whether you go to Canary Islands or Majorca, and you see there is a colony of
> Germany. You see that there are tourists there who are not there to learn anything about
> Spanish culture; they are there to have very good cheap food and booze at the best price. So
> this is opposite to what you have discussed and the sense of humility you were talking about I
> think is something that, of course, we need – to be tourists who are there to appreciate
> something. Secondly, about cultural exchange and cultural identity, I think it’s a universal
> phenomenon this point…. It’s being threatened because suddenly people see on TV
> something that is alien. Whether the identity of that culture is strong enough to withstand that
> and be enriched by it or whether it’s so afraid that it will lose itself and melt, it would depend
> on the reaction of the people and whether they are wise enough to incorporate what’s good
> and reject what’s bad or a second choice is to take everything, good and bad, and their choice
> to reject everything good and bad and by doing that, that’s when we have fundamentalism…
> So by rejecting everything because it comes from outside. And as for poverty…I’m saying
> this not as somebody who was born and raised in Texas, but as somebody who has been born
> and raised in three different continents – I think I am allowed to say something. I think
> poverty should never be idealised, altho ugh I agree totally that wealth does not create
> happiness, I do also see that extreme poverty is tremendous… and as a result of injustices. It
> creates unhappiness; it creates a total sense of un- love, of humiliation, of injustice, of
> inequity. There are no hopes. The ideal good savage who is happy living in there is non-
> existent. People get extremely sick, children die, and if they don’t die and grow up to be adult
> they are sick or handicapped. So I think that thinking that wealth creates happiness and at
> least a decent living standard, I think that is the right, absolute necessity for every human
> being no matter what happens to them.”
> 
> I fully agree with what you’re saying, particularly the last part, and I didn’ t mean to suggest
> that poverty should be a goal in what I was saying. Pope Paul VI said:
> “Development is another name for peace”
> 
> And poverty definitely is a form of violence and that’s what this conference is about – how
> can we help share the wealth of the world and how can we help raise the standards of these
> people who are living in particular poverty. I certainly agree with that. The phrase that was
> used by Dwain Elgin – he was with the Stamford Research Institute – and he did a lot of
> research and writing on the concept of voluntary simplicity (this goes back to the 1970’s) and
> Ghandi himself said that we should ‘live simply, simply, so that others could live’. And a
> statistic I’ve run across just recently; seventy per cent of the space in U.S homes is used for
> storage. So these are commentaries I think on the disparities that are there. And certainly we
> need to work for equity, for justice, for a better standard of living for poor peoples and I agree
> with what you were saying in the earlier two comments.
> 
> (Question)
> 
> “One quick comment and one question. As I listened to the eight different things you said
> tourism helps to create, like jobs, like … news, like reinforcing culture, I said could you put
> prosperity in place of peace? And six out of eight cases seem to me you could, and so quick
> reflections why don’t you call your institute ‘the international institute for tourism and
> prosperity’? But you don’t have to answer me! What I want to come back to is your statement
> in the car yesterday as we were coming in about your efforts you’ve made to try and create …
> of conducts and ethics with the tremendously large and diverse industry of tourism. Have you
> had any impact, do you think, through that? And how does one go about introducing ethics in
> such a large industry?”
> 
> I developed those guidelines and codes of ethics in sustainable tourism for the Canadian
> tourism industry. We completed them in 1993. We began shortly after the Rio summit, and
> one way that it’s done its by the process by which we develop the codes, which was a very,
> very participative process. If any of you are familiar with the DelPhi technique – you go out
> and you get expert opinion from a number of other sources. So we got expert opinion from
> not only people in the travel industry, including academics and tourism leaders, but from the
> areas of environment, culture, and so on, so you get the different opinions from a number of
> key sources, and these people are inputting and then a process where you synthesise it and
> feed it back…so anyway, number one, and I notice this is one of your principals, and that’s
> consultation so that there is an ownership of the ethics when you come to time for
> implementation. And the ethics were ratified by the Canadian tourism industry. The other
> element of it is that a number of other countries have copied, in essence, those codes of ethics,
> and all of this is an evolutionary process – it doesn’t happen over night, but there are
> increasingly codes of ethics out there, and the world tourism organisation, just one year ago,
> came out with a code of ethics for tourism, which incorporates a number of elements. So I
> think it’s an evolutionary process, I think it’s a gradual process – but it is happening. The
> other thing, particularly with industry, and I formed those codes of ethics in 1992, beginning
> in the mid 1970’s with the first comprehensive study we did on the future of tourism, I began
> to introduce a social and environmental ethic, at least to the Canadian tourism industry who
> looked at that study, and as I continued to promote a social and environmental ethic – the
> method I used was to show industry that it was in their own, self-enlightened long-term
> interest. So in terms of adapting environmental values, there is not much you can save by
> cutting down on the waste of paper, the use of fuels, etc, etc – recycling. And these kinds of
> studies and statistics did become available. As well, when you begin to introduce social and
> environmental values, for example Canadian Pacific hotels – before they introduced an
> environmental program (and theirs is one of the top in the world) they did a survey of some
> ten thousand of their employees and the response that came back was that eighty five per cent
> fully supported the company getting into it, eighty six per cent would work over time on their
> own time to help do the recycling, help do the things that were necessary, another ninety per
> cent would take more pride in their company. So these have very, very strong benefits –
> they’re not necessarily quantifiable but they’re there in the image of the company showing an
> environmentally responsible, socially responsible ethic, which sells in the market place. It also
> is a good image when you’re trying to attract the best employees in a competitive
> environment for employing people and it makes people within the company feel better about
> their company.
>
> — *Peace and Prosperity (Used by permission of the curator)*