English - Support to Participatory Constitution Building in Nepal ...

Sustainable tourism and post-conflict state buildingtourism and ST, new potentials will be executed in coordination with localstakeholders, private sector and non-government organisations. This planestimates that operation of tourism activities with direct involvement oflocal stakeholders and communities will enhance not only the knowledgeand consciousness of women, Dalits, backward groups, local peoplebut also their affection towards tourism. This is believed to help in thedevelopment of ST.Then CPN (Maoist)-led government, after some amendments in theold policy of 1995, brought a new Tourism Policy 2009. This policy hasattempted to promote rural, adventure, health and education andagro tourism. It has incorporated the policy of participatory tourismdevelopment approach. In it, the concept of home stay for tourism is amajor focus incorporating the wider participation from rural people.However, its effectiveness is yet to be measured.The nation has passed through eleven periodic plans in more than 50years of planned policy formulations. These plans tried to emphasise STdevelopment by keeping tourism sector at the centre of all economicactivities like poverty alleviation, employment generation, regionalequality and industrial expansion. However, for its positive implicationsof sustainability, there are two kinds of deficiencies observed in tourismpolicies. The first deficiency includes the lack of coherence, completenessand decentralisations for integrated tourism development approach withall round (backward, forward, vertical and horizontal) linkages in suchvarious policies formulations. The other is the weak implementationwhich has always remained a key issue for almost all the public policies inNepal. Tourism is not an exception to this. In general, lack of institutionalcapacity is attributed as the single most important factor to such a poorimplementation of policies (Chand 2003; Ghimire 2009). One instance ofwhich is the lack of effective policy actions supported by strong institutionsthat led to severe environmental problems in Everest region. However,in regard to ACAP, the institutions remained effective in implementingpolicies while creating favourable conditions for local participation. Thiswas seen in planning and decision-making processes through communitybased rural tourism development (Nepal 2003). It is one of the bestreferred models to address the need of community along with thevisitors’ satisfaction, thanks to the minimum impact code and integratedtourism management and nature conservation guidelines brought by thejurisdiction of ACAP under NTNC for green tourism (Bajracharya et al.2007; Grandon 2004; Nirola 2004).100