University of Aarhus ECOTOURISM AS A WAY TO PROTECT ...

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Ecotourism as a sustainable way to protect nature amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The Galapagos Islands are located 1000 km off Ecuador’s coast, and most tourists will prefer to fly to the island rather than passing 30 hours or more to get there by boat. It is possible to promote “polluted payment” on travel cost. Travel agencies should spend a reasonable percentage of the travel costs on forest maintenance or reforestation. This could be the way to reduce the greenhouse gasses. Tourists are transported by car on safaris and other cultural trips to show and satisfy the tourists as much as possible, instead of showing one place more intensely by foot or on horseback etc. Ecotourism should consider and react on these trends. Social and cultural aspects are also important in ecotourism development. It is very necessary to make sure whether social and cultural aspects are sustainable or not. Social society and cultural attraction are easily affected when protected areas are established. They may also be affected by the outside culture that is brought by tourists. Conflicts between black people and white people in KNP have occurred because white people have moved back people out of the protected areas. Their cultural and social structures were changed in the new place. It is not only a case of establishing of protected areas but many large-scale developing projects also generate social and cultural conflicts. You can imagine how difficult it is for local people to get new jobs, and the huge changes of social and cultural structures in the new place are. There is no doubt that conflicts will happen if we carelessly plan in project development strategies. Public involvement at the early stage of project planning is one of the best ways to reduce conflicts. Most large-scale development projects in the world are now required to have environmental impact assessment (EIA) in place. In this process, public involvement is one very important step. Local leaders, local 74
Ecotourism as a sustainable way to protect nature organisations and local people are invited to contribute to project planning. Project holders play an important role to present project proposals and listen to ideas from contributors. In this case, local people are given a chance to understand the goal of the project and its purposes in detail. They also have opportunities to contribute to project proposals by giving contributing with their own ideas. Communities, therefore, will know what projects are going to be done. This also means conflicts from local communities are weeded out at an early stage of the planning process. So the planer can go further in the discussion, explanation, and compromise with local communities in order to get agreements. Hence, the conflicts will be limited or eliminated before projects are carried out. Ecotourism development should learn from this point of view. The CBE as mentioned before is a form of local participation. It is successful in some cases from Namibia CBE, Langtang Ecotourism project-Nepal (UNEP, 2002). Supporting our ideas, various authors also emphasised the role of a participatory approach (Benjamin & Brush, 1996; Diduck, 1999; Amanda, 2001). Benjamin & Brush (1996) strongly stressed that “without the consent of local communities, protected areas couldn’t be managed effectively”. The above arguments show that local participation in ecotourism projects is very important. It helps to reduce or eliminate the social problems at the beginning of the project establishment. Therefore, it should be promoted for future ecotourism development elsewhere. The base steps were summarised by UNEP in the appendix 3. In addition, local communities need to be empowered in order to control ecotourism occurring in their place. Regina (1999) has emphasised the role of local empowerment in tourism management. It includes economic empowerment, psychological empowerment, social empowerment, and political 75
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