OMSLAG 5.indd - IUCN

An example of how community development and conservation can go
hand in hand is a project that was started by INDECON, the Indonesian
Ecotourism Network. Tangkahan, in Northern Sumatra, is a community on
the border of Gunung Leuser National Park. Illegal logging by community
members had been the cause of many conflicts with the park management.
In 2002 – after one of these conflicts – representatives from the park and
from the community sat down together. They founded a community
tourism organization called LPT and signed an agreement. Illegal logging
was to stop and in exchange more than 10,000 hectares of land were
placed under the community’s care. Of this area only 300 hectares are open
for ecotourism. The income from tourism is meant to supplant the need
for logging, which is a very lucrative activity in Indonesia.
Many other communities have started similar tourism projects aimed at this
dual goal of community development and environmental conservation. In
Transport of
logs over water,
Borneo 2.
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practice, however, it has proven to be very difficult to achieve both. If you
want income from tourism to lead to poverty alleviation, you must take
care that the income is well distributed among the community members.
In many cases, just a small group benefits, and these are not necessarily the
people that were involved in the damaging activities in the first place. In
Tangkahan, the target group did start working as guides. But in the first
years of the project, incomes were considerably lower than the amounts
previously earned from logging, which was around US$ 180 per month. It
was important to make sure that the income from tourism would become
an alternative to logging. This is where INDECON became involved. Their
goal was to improve both the marketing and the tourism product itself.
Fighting
poverty
In the year 2000, the United Nations formulated the Millennium
Development Goals. The most important goal was the eradication
of poverty. As a result, several international organizations involved in
tourism have put poverty alleviation on their agenda. The World Tourism
Organisation (WTO) has developed the STEP (Sustainable Tourism
– Eliminating Poverty) programme. This programme promotes a form of
tourism with two key characteristics: it has to be sustainable and it has
to bring economic development and jobs to people living on less than a
dollar a day.
Another project is the Pro-Poor Tourism Partnership. This is a research
project of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism, the
International Institute for Environment and Development, and the
Overseas Development Institute. Their research and experiences show how
tourism development and management can result in increased net benefits
for poor people. Unfortunately, a blueprint for achieving these ends is hard
to give.
There are several reasons why the Pro-Poor Tourism concept can beneficial
to poor people. To put it in economic terms: the consumer of the ‘product’,
in this case tourism, travels to the place where it is ‘produced’. This means
that other people and businesses in the area also profit from the extra
money the tourists bring into the region. Furthermore, tourism depends
on natural capital (flora and fauna, scenery) and culture. These are assets
that many of the poorest countries do have. In most cases, tourism provides
all sorts of jobs. And more importantly, a relatively large number of these
jobs go to women and young people.