Key Issues
1. Providing financial support for protected areas
Conservation of protected areas is costly. Typically, national and local government agencies provide the base funding to accomplish the conservation mission. In recent times, however, many governments have reduced their funding support to protected areas and conservation.
While there are a number of causes for this, tourism is often viewed as a mechanism to replace lost funding. This occurs in several ways: donations, entrance and user fees, concession and rental fees and licences, taxes on retail purchases by visitors, levies and increased general tax revenues from economic activity associated with tourism.
Tourism development within a protected area frequently carries considerable costs and liabilities associated with visitor services above and beyond the basic conservation mission.
These costs are real; thus some mechanism must be found to pay for them.
Reductions in government budget allocations to conservation have led to increased dependence on external sources of funding, primarily revenues from tourism. The search for external funding sources creates pressure for higher visitation and the granting of more concessions and licences. This demand raises a number of issues, including: raising pressures on protected area values from increased visitation; developing efficient fee collection methods; identifying an equitable fee pricing policy; and determining what activities should be subject to a fee. Additionally, there is debate around the potential commodification of biodiversity, cultural and recreational values within the protected area Tourism as a Tool for Conservation and Support of Protected Areas 13
resulting from increased private sector reliance. Pressures to gain revenue from the resource, in turn, increases the potential for negative consequences for biodiversity protection, cultural heritage and for the visitor experiences.
The challenge is to derive economic benefit without unacceptable degradation of other values. The impetus to achieve this is the economic benefits of park-based tourism, which can far exceed government expenditures to manage these sites (Driml and Common, 1995;
Taskforce on Economic Benefits, 1998) and can also contribute significantly to national economies. For example, the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area of Australia currently has over 200 commercial operators utilizing some 200 designated visitor sites within the WHA, and over 4 million visitors per annum. A study in 1997 estimated that tourism in the WHA contributed over A$170 million directly to the regional economy and as such is supported by the agency which is responsible for the management of this area (Watkinson, 2000).
However, unless the activity minimally impacts on the World Heritage values, and a significant proportion of the economic benefits are captured by the resource agency, increased visitation and commercial services for tourism may be simply exploitative and non-sustainable.
Innovation is often required to capture the economic rent from values that visitors derive from the protected area. Entrance and user fees are two of the more traditional means. Donation boxes, equipment hire, specialized tours and provision of park guides are among alternative ways to capture visitor-generated funds (FPATF, 2000). A major issue is that most of the world's protected areas charge relatively low entry and user fees. User fees can be collected by protected area staff or concessionaires who pay licence or concession fees to run their businesses within a protected area. One issue with all fees is the extent to which they are actually directly allocated to protected area conservation goals rather than being appropriated into general government functions. Generally speaking, fees that stay at a local site are found more acceptable by visitors.
Buckley et al. (2001), in an Australian study, found that variation occurs from one state to another, and within any state, according to size, type, and access issues of different parks.
They also found that there are variations in method of payment, from prepaid and annual passes, staffed entry stations, honour collection boxes, and pay and display ticket-vending machines, as well as variation in revenue distribution mechanisms and rates of retention (Buckley et al., 2001). Fee collection itself results in certain costs, such as staffing and accounting, and these will vary according to the site-specific context. Additionally, specialist services and skills for many of the services for which fees are collected are not free. These services include parking, camping, and picnic facilities such as gas barbeques;
operating costs of lodging, food and beverage outlet operations, guiding or other services and attractions like diving within a marine protected area; and boat launching. Often fees only cover the cost of such services and do not generate surplus income.
In many situations, fees may cover only a small proportion of the cost of protecting and providing the features on which park visitation depends, although there is great variability here. Revenues from fees may provide the funding for park naturalists, while government provides funding to maintain the visitor centre. In other situations, visitor and user fees may provide a higher proportion of the funding needs. For example, entrance and user fees for the Saba Marine Park in the Netherlands Antilles completely pay for the cost of management. Likewise, entrance and user fees and other visitor funding sources for Kruger National Park completely fund operations not only of that park but many others in the South African National Park System.
14 Tourism as a Tool for Conservation and Support of Protected Areas
Many pricing policies for protected areas were developed when the 'public good' of protecting nature was considered a benefit to society, and paid for by society through public taxes (Eagles, 1999). However, as governments reduce funding there is an increasing expectation that since the values contained in parks are experienced and enjoyed primarily by those who visit them, those individuals should share an increased burden for their management.
With the growing trend towards nature-based tourism, more private operators are building their businesses out of guided trips to parks; at the same time governments are looking to greater cost recovery, requiring parks to become more financially viable and to utilize visitors as a source of revenue for conservation (Eagles, 1995).
Many people hold concerns that the more protected area managers rely on visitation- based funding the more likely compromises will favour development and visitor activities rather than conservation priorities (Figgis, 1999). In Australia over the past six years, the NSW protected area estate has increased by around 35%, while state government expenditure has more than doubled, from A$ 15 to $35 per hectare. The greatest proportion of this increase is spent on providing visitor facilities and services. This places even greater emphasis on funding from visitors and implies that the main benefits from protected areas accrue to individuals and not society as a whole. In addition, raising fee structures in many situations may lead to significant social distributional consequences, many of which are negative. For example, high entrance fees limit access for those with lower incomes. High fees also tend to 'commodify' a value that has typically been insulated from market decisions.
Others feel that sole reliance on funding for protected area conservation from tourism revenues raises significant equity issues and challenges the business-based model. An important aspect of equity is ensuring everyone is able to enjoy regular access to natural areas. Like other areas of public policy, such as health and education, there are many consequences of the user-pays approach that can deny access to lower socio-economic groups. In order to address equity issues for a wide range of user groups - like locals, senior citizens, pensioners, school children, family groups and members of park associations - some park services have established such complex pricing structures that park staff find them unmanageable.
Setting appropriate fees is a complex task and is fraught with contentious politics reflecting conflicting ideologies about protected areas. Low entry and use fees are often the result of a wide range of socio-political factors. These include centralized budget allocation processes; issues of equity and access for all; political concern about increases in park fees upsetting local constituencies; the continued belief that society generally should pay for protected areas; pressure from conservation groups to keep visitation low; lack of planning and marketing for higher levels of visitation; lack of research into appropriate methods of determining reasonable pricing policies; lack of partnerships between private operators and park agencies; and varying levels of visitor services and infrastructure (Eagles, 1999).
Research suggests that by using the concept of 'total economic value', it is possible to identify the goods and services or 'products' protected areas offer that are suitable for raising revenue for their conservation. With proper management, the 'products' can be sold repeatedly without diminishing the area's total value. However, this would require not only a comprehensive understanding of what those products are but also the presence of business plans to assess and realize the potential benefits to ensure the long-term financial Tourism as a Tool for Conservation and Support of Protected Areas 15
sustainability of protected areas in their care (Taskforce on Economic Benefits, 1998;
FPATF, 2000).
While Figgis (1999) acknowledges numerous benefits of the user-pays approach, she also points to a number of worrying trends and impacts which can be broadly categorized into two concerns: the commercialization of nature and culture, and the 'distortion' of management. She argues that, with commodification, the needs of tourism, visitors and economic rationalist thinking (tourism-centred planning) take precedence over conservation priorities (nature-centred planning). Many see the trend for commercial tourism developments in protected areas as one of the major threats of ecotourism. The ecotourism label could be perceived as a 'cloak of green' with ecological, aesthetic and cultural impacts ignored due to economic benefits (Figgis, 1999).
The trend in some countries such as Australia toward commercial development is the opposite to the USA, where some 50% of parks are 're-greening' after years of commercial development, by closing down roads, food and lodging facilities. This turnaround in management practices is due to lessons learned from the impacts of economic determinism on park values (Figgis, 1999). In other countries, such as South Africa, tourism has successfully bought in much needed financial support. Other chapters look in detail at the financing of conservation from tourism operations.