High hopes have been attached to ecotourism as a means to support conservation, protected areas and rural economies, while minimizing the negative impacts of visitation on valuable natural and cultural heritage. In Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa, nature-based tourism has contributed substantially to the financing of national protected area systems (see Bushell and McCool, Chapter 2; Eagles, Chapter 3; Pederson, Chapter 7; and Financing Protected Areas Task Force, 2000).
Even in industrialized countries, protected areas are now being acknowledged as boosting tourism in their surroundings, thus creating income for local people who otherwise have few employment and development alternatives. In Germany, creating new protected areas or expanding existing ones gains greater acceptance among local people when accompanied by regional promotion of ecotourism. National parks, such as the Bavarian Forest, are now widely recognized as being local job promoters through nature-based tourism.
On the other hand, ecotourism received mixed reviews during and prior to the International Year of Ecotourism 2002. In many ways, ecotourism is still in its infancy compared to the high ambitions on its behalf. Two types of shortcomings are frequently observed, especially in developing countries (Strasdas, 200 Ib):
Highly attractive and accessible areas (such as World Heritage sites) are very popular tourist destinations. Although this means substantial profits for the tourism operators
involved, only a small proportion of the money reaches conservation organizations or local people. Adverse environmental impacts then lead to deterioration in the quality of tourism on offer.
In areas that are either less attractive or less accessible, conservation or rural development organizations have tried to develop ecotourism with financial and technical support from donors. These small-scale projects may be well managed from the start in terms of environmental and social impacts, but can be much less successful in commercial terms. This significantly limits their capacity to create positive economic impacts.
However, these generalizations can only serve as a certain orientation when analysing the reasons for ecotourism not reaching full potential. Case studies in Chapters 13-19 (see in particular the Ontario Parks research, Chapter 17) demonstrate places and strategies where ecotourism has been highly effective in both financial and conservation terms.
Nevertheless, a number of factors have been identified - in the field and in the scientific literature - as affecting the success of ecotourism ventures. Most commonly, these factors relate to lack of funding to protected area agencies, especially in developing countries. This, in turn, leads to a lack of personnel and deficient or badly maintained visitor infrastructure.
Other factors include lack of political support, legal uncertainty and problems with protected area compliance and enforcement.
Local people - who are meant to be the main beneficiaries of ecotourism along with protected area agencies - also often suffer from a lack of necessary resources. This includes the means to invest, lack of legal and political rights, and insufficient infrastructure. These are external factors, which can only be remedied through financial support (investments, loans, budget allocations) and political/legal action. Investment is needed before ecotourism can return dividend payments to consortia, communities and individuals. As mentioned throughout this book, ecotourism is not and cannot be an environmental panacea in and of itself.
In terms of investment of time and research, particularly in developing countries, is the need to address internal shortcomings of stakeholders themselves. Paramount among stakeholder-based concerns is the lack of technical capacity to deal with the complex requirements that successful ecotourism management requires. Capacity in this context is defined as knowledge, understanding and skills. In particular, the following shortcomings have been commonly identified:
Among protected area agencies
In highly attractive parks there is often a predominantly passive and regulatory, rather than proactive, approach to tourism. The private sector generally initiates tourism ventures, until regulation is no longer effective or accepted. By contrast, park management could actively shape tourism use patterns from the start.
Management plans rarely deal with the tourist use of an area comprehensively, thus management action is haphazard and inconsistent.
Visitor management techniques are not known or rely too much on the simple concept of carrying capacity.
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There is little service-orientation and limited understanding of how to create attractive tourist experiences or tourism products. Different visitor needs may not be fully researched.
Marketing also is often not fully funded, invested in, staffed, or researched.
Park administrations may lack understanding of tourism as a business and/or lack business management skills. If fees are charged, procedures tend to be bureaucratic and inflexible rather than correlating with the actual value of a park as an attraction or the tourists' willingness to pay.
There is too little cooperation with the tourism sector, be it private or public. Reasons for certain protection measures or the use of fees charged to visitors are not sufficiently communicated.
Training specific to these areas is needed to up-skill park staff in order to maximize the benefit of visitation.
Among local people
Involving local people in protected area-based tourism, either as employees, as providers of goods and services, or as independent tourism entrepreneurs, is a key element of the ecotourism concept. This is vital to protected areas in order to create local support for conservation, for protected areas to deliver regional economic benefits, and to tackle poverty alleviation. Protected area agencies should assume an active role in order to ensure that local benefits are indeed being generated, either by employing or promoting local people, for example as tourist guides/drivers, handicraft manufacturers, managers and service personnel. Alternatively, park management may act as a mediator between local people and external investors wishing to establish tourism enterprises in the park or its vicinity.
Tourism as a phenomenon of affluent contemporary societies is a particularly difficult concept for most rural people in developing countries to grasp. Unless they have had previous experiences with travellers, such as along traditional trading or pilgrimage routes, they are confronted with something utterly different from their own lives and leisure preferences, especially if foreign tourists are involved. In this sense tourism development may be more difficult than, for example, agricultural or forestry-related activities for which a local tradition usually exists for people to build upon.
Shortcomings are similar to the ones cited above for protected area agencies, but a few factors tend to be even more pronounced among rural communities:
Lack of formal education or illiteracy.
Lack of foreign (or even national) language skills.
Different ways of dealing with hygiene, litter, maintenance of infrastructure and buildings.
Limited knowledge of food preparation for foreigners, including catering to dietary, nutritional and culinary tastes.
Different concepts of time (which can be interpreted by tourists as unreliability).
Lack of decision-making and planning skills concerning the possible consequences of tourism coupled with a limited ability to control tourism development, unpredictable political climates, and longer-term funding uncertainty.
As a consequence, community-based ecotourism facilities and services may be unacceptable to international visitors, except occasional backpackers. Another quite common reaction to the lack of local tourism-related skills is that outside investors bypass local communities, importing goods and using personnel from urban centres. In this way, potential local multiplier effects are lost. On the other hand, externally driven tourism development may get out of hand, causing exploitation of local people, and local economic imbalances, due to poor local planning and management skills or powers.
In contrast, virtually every project that has successfully integrated local people into ecotourism enterprises or has created successful local ecotourism ventures has had a strong capacity-building component incorporated in the project design. Examples are the Cultural Tourism Programme, a village tourism project in the vicinity of Northern Tanzania's world- famous protected areas; the Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife on-the-job training of local employees in the agency's tourism facilities; and Kapawi Lodge, a joint ecotourism venture between an outside investor and an indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon lowlands (Hausler and Strasdas, 2003).
Fig. 1. Workshops with protected area managers help to build awareness and capacity for participatory, multidisciplinary ecotourism planning and management.
The tourism-related capacities that are needed for local communities depend on the degree of involvement with ecotourism activities (see Table 1). The degree of empowerment and the potential for regional development are higher where independent local businesses exist. However, the economic risks and the necessary level of skills and knowledge increase accordingly. Thus, the need for capacity-building is lower when outside investors are involved, as these groups usually take care of business management and marketing. In the case of more autonomous community-based ventures offering a range of services from accommodation to guided tours, the risk is significantly higher. This is because local owners have to acquire business management skills and an in-depth understanding of the tourism market.
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Table 1. Types of local people's economic participation in tourism (source: based on Tourism KwaZulu Natal (undated)).
Type of participation Reception of PA use fees
Sale of land to investor Rent of land or
delegation of use rights Employment by
outside investor Supply of goods and
services Community- private sector
joint venture
Independent community
enterprise
Individual local
Level of empowerment
none
low
low
low
low to moderate
moderate to high
high
high
Contribution to local development
low
low
low
moderate
moderate
high
high
high
Level of tourism-related skill required
none
none, except for ability to negotiate favourable terms none, except for ability to negotiate favourable terms management, see for example SAN Parks case study,
Chapter 18
low to moderate (high for qualified positions)
low to moderate (high for qualified guides)
moderate
high
high
Security of return secure
very secure
secure
fairly secure
fairly secure
fairly secure
insecure
insecure
Direction of benefits community as a whole
individuals or community as a whole (depending on land
tenure)
individuals or community as a whole (depending on land
tenure and use rights) individuals, potentially including poorest members
more active individuals
active individuals and community as a whole (depending on arrangements
with the investor) active individuals and community as a whole (depending on arrangements
between the community and the group operating the
enterprise) active individuals
Among tourism professionals
A lack of capacity concerning ecotourism's highly complex requirements can also be observed among tour operators, hotel/lodge owners and other private sector tourism professionals. While it is usually assumed that these stakeholders know how to 'do' tourism, they may lack knowledge about how to conduct their business in a sustainable way or how to develop new products that are both sustainable and of high quality. This may even be true at tourism destinations with a long history such as Mexico or Kenya (Strasdas, 200la). The following concerns are raised, mostly relating to highly attractive protected areas which tend to draw in businesses aiming for high profit margins without necessarily being philosophically dedicated to ecotourism:
Environmentally damaging business practices;
Refusal to contribute (financially or otherwise) to the preservation of the protected areas that are being exploited as a tourism resource, chiefly because the role of conservation in safeguarding these resources is not understood;
Culturally insensitive behaviour towards, and/or exploitation of, local communities and their traditions;
Lack of product quality due to a low level of interpretation or staged cultural experiences;
Lack of understanding of specific ecotourism market segments that are interested in interpretation, and authentic natural and cultural experiences;
Poorly focused marketing strategies and promotional material failing to reach target groups.
At this point the discussion turns to the question of who should be in charge of tourism management and operations when protected areas are being developed for nature-based tourism. What should be the role of the protected area agency, and what part should the private sector perform? This definition of roles or division of labour determines the respective capacities that are needed for the sustainable management of tourism. The following are options for partnerships:
Tourism is completely managed by the protected area agency alone. This tends to be the case in many industrialized countries with functioning government structures and sufficient budgets. This role usually encompasses tourism planning, visitor information and the management and operation of small, rustic facilities. All other tourist services (including hotels) are generally located outside the protected area and operated by the private sector. However, a protected area agency may initiate certain tourism activities beyond its immediate boundaries and support the marketing of a region with a high proportion of protected areas, for example the marketing initiative Lust aufNatur;" in the German State of Brandenburg.
Partial outsourcing of tourism management to the private sector, mostly tour operations, lodges and shops. Some tourism activities (especially visitor management and interpretation, and some guided tours and facility management) are retained by the protected area agency, provided it has sufficient capacity to do so, for example, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, South Africa.
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158 Capacity-building for Ecotourism
Total outsourcing of every component of tourism management to the private sector, with the protected area agency holding concessionaires accountable according to their contracts, lease conditions, codes of conduct and environmental management plans, for example, Zambian Wildlife Agency, South African National Parks.
Contracting an NGO to manage conservation and tourism (sometimes including facilities and tour operation for specific protected areas, for example, Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area managed by Programme for Belize on behalf of the government of Belize. Local NGOs (Friends o f . . . organizations) can also take on partial tasks related to tourism, such as guided interpretive tours for visitors.
In general, there is a tendency worldwide (including in industrialized countries) to outsource formerly public services. This means that the most needed staff capacities will be in the fields of tourism management and cooperation with the private sector and local organizations. Operational tasks are more likely to be performed by non-government stakeholders. On the other hand, protected area agencies need to become regional partners for the promotion of tourism destinations where protected areas form an important part of regional tourism products.
More outsourcing means heightened responsibilities for the private sector. It requires the capacity for sustainable management beyond regular business management skills. This means that tourism organizations (government, mixed or private; national, regional and local) in charge of tourism planning and development must develop a fundamental understanding of conservation needs and associated capacities that enable them to cooperate with protected areas agencies. The environmental and economic justification for this is preservation of the natural resources, which are the primary raw material of nature-based tourism enterprises.
Among development agencies and NGOs
Surprisingly, a lack of ecotourism-related capacity is also an issue with donors and national or international conservation NGOs acting as advisors or mediators in many ecotourism projects. Surprising, because these stakeholders are supposed to help protected area agencies and local communities with their expected ecotourism expertise. As it turns out, this expertise is often deficient or non-existent. Although only a few studies have been conducted on this topic (Strasdas, 200 Ib), it has become clear that ecotourism all too often is only a minor component of conservation projects (usually one of several buffer zone development possibilities) or restricted to financing the construction of visitor infrastructure in protected areas without taking into account further necessities such as product development or marketing.
Tourism-related studies tend to investigate environmental carrying capacities rather than market potential, and there is seldom an encompassing management plan for tourism development and management in a park. Though there are exceptions,6 and some recent activities point in the right direction,7 multi- and bilateral donors and international conservation NGOs have not developed and resourced ecotourism programmes, departments or coordinators to their full potential. The staff who design biodiversity projects with a sustainable use component usually have a background in natural science rather than in tourism management. Thus, in the project design phase there may be errors or omissions, such as feasibility and market studies and capacity-building for local staff.
To summarize, a need for capacity-building exists in different fields for a variety of stakeholders involved with tourism in protected areas, particularly in developing countries.
It is essential that capacity-building programmes are designed with the specific needs of target market segments in mind. Capacity-building has also been identified as a key instrument for successful ecotourism development by important conferences in this field.
For example, the Quebec Declaration (the final document of the World Ecotourism Summit in 2002) contains a number of recommendations concerning capacity-building, which are summarized by the following statements:
'To non-governmental organizations, community-based associations, academic and research institutions: ... provide technical, financial, educational, capacity-building and other support for ecotourism destinations, host community organizations, small businesses, and the corresponding local authorities
'To inter-governmental organizations, international financial institutions and development assistance agencies: ... build capacity for regional, national and local organizations for the formulation and application of ecotourism policies and plans Capacity-building has also been part of the recommendations that have emanated from theVth World Parks Congress:
'There are many stakeholders in protected area sites, and thus managers need resources and training to enable them to work effectively with different constituencies, including conservation bodies, government departments, community, NGOs, tourism industry, and visitors.
Therefore, participants in the 5th World Parks Congress ... call on the IUCN, together with key international agencies, to support research and development and to provide appropriate tourism training for park staff...' (WCPA Recommendation 12).
InWEnt Training for Protected Area Managers
Capacity-building International (InWEnt) is a non-profit organization for international human resources development, training and dialogue and was established through a merger of Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft and the German Foundation for International Development (DSE). InWEnt objectives are to: 'promote knowledge transfer between North and South, East and West; international exchange of experience; initiation of developmental processes;
and global cooperation.' The main target group is 'skilled and executive personnel' from institutions in developing countries. Most programmes are financed by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
From 1999 to 2003 the InWEnt Centre for Food, Rural Development and Environment (ZEL) carried out a series of seminars as part of a policy dialogue and professional training programme in Southern and Eastern Africa. This programme was entitled Management of Protected Area Systems towards the Integration of Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources.
Among themes such as community-based land-use planning, conflict management or transboundary protected areas, ecotourism was the topic of three seminars, all of which were held in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and organized in cooperation with Ezemvelo Capacity-building for Ecotourism 159