Mapping Gender Responsive Tourism Fiscal Value Chains and Outcomes in Pacific

The Barbados Programme of Action (BPOA), adopted in 1994, recognized the distinct development challenges faced by Small Island Developing States (SIDS). At SIDS4 in May 2024, SIDS adopted the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS, a framework for resilient and inclusive prosperity. For Pacific Island countries facing climate change and economic vulnerabilities, inclusive research and policy engagement remain critical. In this context, ESCAP’s Subregional Office for the Pacific is engaging three Online Volunteers to support gender research and mapping studies focused on Fiji and Palau.

Tourism taxation is increasingly used across island economies to raise revenue, manage environmental pressures and support sustainable tourism and climate objectives. However, gender-neutral taxes can affect women and men differently due to differences in income, employment, business ownership, consumption, unpaid care responsibilities and participation in economic decision-making. While existing research examines tourism tax design and revenue generation, less is known about who bears tourism-related fiscal costs, who benefits from revenues and public expenditure, who participates in allocation decisions, and who is protected from climate and disaster shocks.

This research will therefore take a broader tourism public finance perspective, considering taxation, revenue use, fiscal incentives, public spending, governance and resilience together. It will complement the Pacific Tourism Organisation’s Gender and Inclusive Tourism Action Plan and consider how tourism public finance can contribute to the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, particularly on inclusive economic development and climate and disaster resilience.

The Online Volunteers’ work will directly support ESCAP’s evidence base for identifying gaps, opportunities and practical entry points for more gender-responsive tourism public finance and policy in the Pacific.

ESCAP is undertaking work to better understand tourism fiscal value chains in the Pacific, including how tourism-related revenues are collected, allocated and used, who benefits from these resources, and whether fiscal instruments generate gender-responsive and climate-resilient outcomes. The OV assignments will contribute to this work through evidence review and mapping of selected tourism fiscal instruments.

We are looking for 3 Online Volunteers who will support ESCAP with mapping the tourism fiscal value chain — who pays, where revenues go and who benefits — through a gendered analysis.

Task 1 (1 Online Volunteer) Establish the Evidence Base for Gender-Responsive Tourism Public Finance

- Conduct a focused literature review to establish what is known and what remains unknown about the gender and distributional impacts of tourism taxation and tourism-related public finance, with particular attention to the Pacific.
- Review Pacific-only evidence on gender and taxation, tourism taxation, gender and tourism, tourism-related public expenditure and tax incentives, and tourism climate and disaster financing.
- Structure the analysis around four questions: Who pays? → Who benefits? → Who has a voice? → Who is protected?
- Identify key knowledge gaps around questions not adequately answered, Pacific evidence gaps (evidence exists internationally but not sufficiently for the Pacific; and data gaps (information needed to answer the question is not collected or available).
- Output will be a short literature review and Research Gap Matrix (maximum 15 pages with references).

For each of the four questions, assess:

1) Who pays? Who ultimately bears tourism taxes-the visitor, businesses, workers, suppliers or residents? Are there different impacts on women, lower-income households and women-owned MSMEs?
2) Who benefits? Where do tourism revenues go and who benefits from the resulting expenditure and tax incentives? Do women workers, women-owned businesses and local communities' benefit?
3) Who has a voice? Who determines how tourism revenues are allocated? Are women, local businesses and tourism-hosting communities represented in decision-making and oversight?
4) Who is protected? Who benefits from tourism-related climate resilience and post-disaster support? Are women workers, women-owned MSMEs and tourism-dependent communities adequately covered?

Output - Prepare a short literature review and Research Gap Matrix (maximum 15 pages with references) covering:

Who pays?
What is already known?
What Pacific evidence exists?
What remains unknown?
What additional data are needed?

Who benefits?
What is already known?
What Pacific evidence exists?
What remains unknown?
What additional data are needed?

Who has a voice?
What is already known?
What Pacific evidence exists?
What remains unknown?
What additional data are needed?

Who is protected?
What is already known?
What Pacific evidence exists?
What remains unknown?
What additional data are needed?

Weekly progress updates
Week 1 (day 1) - Introductory meeting
Week 2 (day 1) - Update on initial research
Week 3 (day 1) - First draft of the report without the research gap matrix
Week 4 (day 1) - Second draft of the report including the research gap matrix
Week 5 (day 1) - Final report
Week 5 (day 3) - Finalize updates requested for the report and on Day 7 submit the final report

Task 2 (2 Online Volunteers): Map the Use and Beneficiaries of PPEF and ECAL

Two Online Volunteers will support ESCAP by undertaking a detailed mapping of Palau's Pristine Paradise Environmental Fee (PPEF) and Fiji's Environmental and Climate Adaptation Levy (ECAL) to understand how revenues were collected, allocated and used, who benefited, and whether they generated gender-responsive outcomes even where gender was not an explicit objective.

For each case, Online Volunteers will be asked to identify the below and then prepare a comparative mapping of PPEF and ECAL showing (maximum 15 pages per OV).

- Revenue collected – amount collected and period covered.
- Expenditure by programme – programmes, projects and activities funded.
- Beneficiaries – direct and indirect beneficiaries of expenditure.
- Women beneficiaries – whether and how women benefited, including where this was not explicitly intended.
- Women-owned and local businesses – whether they received funding, contracts or other benefits.
- Allocation decisions – how funding decisions were made and whether women participated in those decisions.
- Communities benefiting – which communities benefited and through what investments.
- Climate and resilience outcomes – what expenditure supported climate adaptation, environmental protection or disaster resilience and who benefited.
- Implicit gender outcomes – whether the design or use of the levy produced positive, neutral or potentially adverse outcomes for women despite having no explicit gender objective.
- Why it worked or did not – identify features that may explain the outcomes, such as the type of expenditure financed, targeting of beneficiaries, governance arrangements, community participation, accessibility to small businesses, or absence of gender-disaggregated data.

The analysis should distinguish between explicit gender-responsive design and gender-responsive outcomes that emerged indirectly. It should also avoid assuming that expenditure benefiting communities necessarily benefited women equally; this should be supported by available evidence.

Output- Prepare a comparative mapping of PPEF and ECAL showing (maximum 15 pages per UNV):

Revenues collected and expenditure;
Beneficiaries, including women and local businesses;
Gender and climate/resilience outcomes;
Whether gender-responsive outcomes occurred despite not being explicit objectives;
Factors that appear to have supported or constrained these outcomes; and
Key data and monitoring gaps.

This should help identify whether existing tourism fiscal instruments can generate gender-responsive outcomes without being explicitly designed as gender instruments, where this occurs, and what changes could make such outcomes more deliberate and measurable in future.

Weekly progress updates
Week 1 (day 1) - Introductory meeting
Week 2 (day 1) - Update on initial research
Week 3 (day 1) - First draft of the report without complete gender responsive outcomes
Week 4 (day 1) - Second draft of the report including complete gender responsive outcomes
Week 5 (day 1) - Final report
Week 5 (day 3) - Finalize updates requested for the report and on Day 7 submit the final report