the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

situation also significantly contributes to the level of revenue repatriation by foreign
parties.
Within enclave tourism, backward linkages are generally very weak, particularly if
the enclaves are controlled by multinational interests. This is part of the reason why
tourism development in the Okavango Delta has failed to promote agricultural
development and local manufacturing ventures. Agricultural/food and manufactured
products used in the tourism industry in the Okavango Delta are generally imported
from South Africa, and hence, the industry has not facilitated the development of
economic linkages with other local sectors, nor has it promoted the envisaged 'trickle
down' effect which is meant to benefit the overall economy. In addition, within
enclave tourism, any foreign currency generated tends to have only a minimal effect
upon the economy of host nations as many payments, etc., are done in the tourists
home country, and payments received in the tourist destination are often transferred
to the home countries of the foreign tourism operators. Cater and Lawman (1994)
note that in a situation where the headquarters of multinational tourism companies
are in developed countries, there is a considerable reduction in the net tourism
receipts in Third World economies. The nature of Botswana's tourism industry has
led to much of the revenue generated from tourism being repatriated, resulting in
only a minimal share being retained in the country.
A second approach to the use of tourism as a development strategy has more
recently been incorporated in the Okavango Delta's tourism industry. This is the
concept contained within neo-populist development, with its focus on a bottom-up
approach to development involving local people from beginning, and post­
modernism, as discussed in the theoretical framework in chapter three. The recent
implementation of the Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM)
programme and the development of Community Based Tourism in the Okavango
Delta is in line with this approach to development. Such approaches to the
development of tourism and using tourism as a development strategy, although
fraught with their own problems, which stem from grass roots development, show
more suitable characteristics than does conventional, state-instigated and foreign
dominated, forms of tourism.
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