PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA (25 November 2014) – The Asian Development Bank has approved an $18 million loan to build a marine ferry terminal and other infrastructure in southern Cambodia to open up new opportunities for tourism beyond current popular destinations like the famous temples of Angkor.

The idea that tourists swimming in a jungle waterfall or strolling around an ancient temple can help reduce poverty seems too good to be true. But it is a fact: an increasing body of research clearly demonstrates that tourism can help the poor.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (25 January 2011) - The Asian Development Bank will continue to help countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion promote tourism as a way to reduce poverty. The announcement came at the 2011 ASEAN Tourism Forum in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

This sector assessment, strategy, and road map (ASR) documents the current strategic assistance priorities in the tourism sector of the governments of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

In this issue of the Journal of Greater Mekong Subregion Development Studies, we feature five articles that concern some of the more pressing issues of cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) - trade facilitation and trade logistics, the trade impact of cross-border transport infrastructure, tourism corridor development, and biofuels and rural renewable energy. The diversity of the topics tackled in this volume reflects the multifaceted challenges of regional cooperation.

This issue of the Journal focuses on the seminal research undertaken by Social Research Institute of Chiang Mai University (SRI-CMU) on the question: How does community-based tourism (CBT) impact on poverty? Five research papers were selected from the SRI-CMU project. The overview article, Tourism: Blessings for All?, by Mingsarn Kaosa-ard, discusses the returns from tourism and how these returns are being shared from a national perspective. The benefits and the potential negative impacts of tourism are weighed.

This publication outlines the GMS Economic Cooperation Program (GMS Program) which was initiated in 1992 with the support of ADB. It aims to promote economic cooperation among Cambodia, People's Republic of China (PRC), Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam.
The GMS Program covers nine priority sectors: transportation, telecommunications, energy, environment, human resource development, trade, investment, tourism, and agriculture.

The fledgling Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Journal for Development Studies, published under the auspices of the Phnom Penh Plan (PPP) for Development Management, moves a step ahead with the second issue. In what might be considered as "ascending steps," GMS scholarship is moving forward, slowly but surely. The PPP's commitment is to ensure that we continue to make strides towards our goal of bridging the gap between research and capacity building and to propagate the gospel of balanced socioeconomic development in the GMS.