Benefit of Ecotourism

There are many different benefits that can be derived from Ecotourism if it use as a tool by local communities rather than large outside interest. However, the result are a direct reflection of the motivation behind the project. Since these motivation are often mixed it follow that result are often mixed too.

The following article was originally published by USAID, in organization that helps fund varius ecotourism project in many developing nations.

Win Win Approaches to Development and the Enviroment, Eotourism and Biodiversity Conservation.
Center for Biodiversity Information and Evaluation
Whether called nature tourism nor ecotourism, recreational and educational travel based on natural attractions is a promising means of advancing social, economic, and environment objectives in developing countries. It offers countries new opportunities for small-enterprise investment and employment an increase the national stake in protecting their biological resources. However, making ecotourism a positive economic and environmental tool requires policies that foster responsible nature touris develovment, broad-based and active local participation in its benefits, and conservation of developing countries biological heritage.
The Problem
Forest and marine habitat are being destroyed and same of the wildlife they contain is being driven to extinction under the pressures of hunting, logging, agriculture, and fishing. Where areas have been officially reserved for nature conservation, many developing country government lack sufficient funds to manage and protect them. These area is being destroyed because they are not fully valued for their role as nature”s genetic reservoirs of the world”s biological resources.


The Win Win Solution
A recent USAID evaluation has identified ecotourism as an enterprise with potential positive contributions to the conservation of endangered biological resources. (See Synthesis Report Stemming The Loss Of Biological Diversity : An Assesment of USAID Support for Pritected-Area Management, July 1995). Contributions of ecotourism include raising local awareness about the value of biological resources, increasing local partipation in the benefits of biodiversity conservation (through new sources of jobs and incomes), and generating revenues toward conservation of biologically rich areas.
Wildlife and its habitats in the developing countries are becoming increasingly popular attractions for international tourism. Many of the richest areas, biologically, are in the developing world. Growing number of ecoturism are flocking to the mountains of the Nepal and Madagascar, the tropical forest of Cotarica and Thailand, also Indonesia. Nature tourism bring with them money to spend, money that the creates jobs and income for household and communities in and around national park and other protected areas. Ecotourism enterprises tour agencies and guide services, lodges and private reserves as well as such satellite activities as crafts industries and tranfortation and food services, also generate revenue and foreign exchange. Government can use this income in operating and operating and protecting natural habitat.
Be recognizing the importance of protecting biological diversity, ecotourism is raising appreciation for biological resources and leading to better concervation practices by developing country population. It must of course be properly regulated and managed to protect against adverse environmental and cultural effects that can come with overbuilding of tourist facilities and influx of populations around fragile ecosystems. Assumsing such oversight, nature tourism can benefit both the environment and economic development.
The Role of USAID
USAID supports nature-based tourism activities as part of its biodiversity conservation programs in more than a dozen coutries worldwide. The Agency”s ecotourism activities include support for developing national park system, demarcating and equipping new national parks, revruiting and training park staff, and encouraging government reforms that promote regulated investment in private lodging, guide, service, and other tourism ventures.
The Agency’s involvement is recent, beginning in the mid-1980s, and the effect of these activities is only starting to emerge. USAID biodiversity conservation programs have demonstrated that potential local resistance ti setting aside forsert and fisihing areas for concervation can often be softened by employment and income-producing opportunities ecotourism can generate.
In Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Srilangka, and Indonesia, USAID support led to the creation of entirely new wildlife park that have begun to spawn tourism facilities around them. Tourist demand for food, lodging, souvenir, educational materials, and guide and transfortation services stimulates local investment, employment, and incomes. Costa Rica has introduced revenue retention arrangements to keep earnings from entrance fees for park operations ; it award contracts to local communities to operate food and souvenir concession as ameans of building local involvement in and commitment to park conservation. Costa Rica has also included a variable park entrance fee structure (charging higger fees to international tourist than to local visitor) to increase revenue.
In Nepal, Madagascar, and Thailand, USAID has supported integrated conservation and development activities to promote new livelihoods including nature tourism based employment as alternatives to encroaching into protected national park ffor hunting, logging, and farming. Engagement of local people in planning and conducting ecotourism activities has generated a new group of stakeholders with a visted interest in protecting park. The nature jobs depend on it.
USAID’s Central American Paseo PAntera (“Panther Walk”) project has helped establish national nature touris councils in Guatemala and Honduras to involve local communities and tourism enterprises. The council also enlist international conservation organization as advisors to promote green, self-sustaning tourism activities..
These experiences suggest thet ecotourism can be a contructive component of strategies to promote, at the same time, both environmental protection an develovment of private enterprise. USAID can help promote nature tourism in a way that maximizes its contribution to both the economies and the ecologies of developing coutriess. Specifically, USAID other donors, NGOs and developing country government can work together to :
1. Identify and mobilize funding for potential private nature tourism investment,. Ecotourism anterprises, like most business ventures, need operating capital. USAID and other donors can help identify promisng funding sources.
2. Formulated fiscal policies to promote nature turism and to maximize its economic and environmental benefits. USAID can encourage public policies (such as visitor fees, regulations for tourism oerations, and investment incentives and land-use zones for tourist facilities) that promote environmentally sound tourism as well as community involvement in providing services and products such as guides, lodging, transport, and crafts.
3. Encourage international exchange of information and know-how about nature tourism opportunities and operations. USAID can foster participation by developing country public agencies and private service providers in international nature tourism associations that can help them, throught technical and management training, to meet the needs and interest of international and domestic nature tourist.
4. Monitor angd certify the performance of ecotourism activities. USAID can support emerging international movement aimed at prmoting “green tourism “. Green tourism take ecotourism a step further, promoting envirimentally responsible tourist operations that conserve energy, recycle waste, and instruct staff and tourists on proper behavior in park and protected areas.
5. Found research on ecotourism developmental and environmental impact. Informaion is needed to demonstrate to decision-maker the economic contributionsw nature tourism can make. Better understanding of the impact of ecotourism (such as in resort development) is needed to regulate and enforce against environmentally damaging investments.
Outstanding Issue :
Risk : Unregulated, nature tourism can dmage the enviromentand corrode local cultures. Pollution from runaway resort and hotel development around fragile park areas in Costa Rica, Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia exemplifies poorly manged ourism activity.
Distribution of benefits : Where international travel and resort chains or urban investor control the tourism industry, the local economic effect of ecotourism may be reduced. Early studies of ecotourism expenditures suggest that in such cases not much perhaps 20 to 30 cents of the tourist dollar stays in the natonal economic ; even less reaches local communities.
Perception : Developing coutries fear that their park and protected areas will become playgrounds fpr international tourists, with the land reserved for conservation and no longer available for farming to feed and employ thei growing populations.
Lack of information : More and better information is need about the actual and potential economic contribution of natural tourism ventures and practices. Inclusion of visits to natural attractions as part of regular recreation tourism needs tobe explored along with “purer” form of nature tourism nand travel.

Write by : Agus Hermawan Apandi