V.R. van der Duim

Biodiversity and Tourism: Impacts and Interventions

This paper sets a framework for intervention in the relationship between biodiversity and tourism against the background of the Convention on Biological Diversity. It is argued that intervention cannot and should not only be based on considerations of measurable impacts of tourism on biodiversity alone. This action should also be weighed against arguments of legitimacy, feasibility, and effectiveness of its various types. Currently, feasibility seems to be the main principle on which interventions are based. As most instruments are non-compulsory, they are effective only to a limited extent. For reasons of legitimacy, the position of small-scale entrepreneurs should receive more attention in international and national policy debates.

Tourism Chains and Pro-poor Tourism Development: An Actor-Network Analysis of a Pilot Project in Costa Rica

This paper analyses a pilot project in Costa Rica aimed to examine and improve the market linkages of 24 small-scale tourism initiatives to tour operators in Costa Rica and the Netherlands. It links pro-poor tourism and the concept of tourism chain to actor-network theory. The analysis shows that the tangible results in terms of pro-poor tourism of the project itself were meagre, as, initially, only three and later only one out of 24 projects was included in the tourism chain. However, the analysis of this project contributes to an increasing body of knowledge on how to make tourism work for the poor, in Costa Rica as well as elsewhere. It argues to move beyond existing ways of theorising tourism and to explore the heuristics of conceptualising tourism in terms of actor-network theory and suggests to examine processes of translation in which the researcher follows and supports development organisations, incoming tour operators or any other particular actor in the process of creating associations that produce the desired effect: the increase of net benefits for the poor.

Tourism and development at work: 15 years of tourism and poverty reduction within the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation.

Over the last 20 years, international development agencies like SNV Netherlands Development Organisation have hesitantly become involved in tourism. This paper explains the complex and rarely researched political and technical issues behind the working practices, drivers and beliefs of an aid agency seeking to alleviate poverty via tourism development. Based on insiders’ commentaries and documentary sources, it presents five phases of the conceptual and material ordering of tourism within SNV. The phases took SNV from opposition to tourism work, through Community-Based Tourism (CBT), expansion, links to Millennium Development Goals, working in partnership with the private sector and an overall increasing need to deliver defined short term results – to closure. It explains how and why tourism became an important part of development work and how changing policy discourses and practices of international and national organisations influence the way tourism is practised as part of development work. It shows that SNV itself stimulated strong international debates about tourism and development. It concludes that relations between tourism and development remain highly contested and require the continual production of “success”. SNV is now gradually closing its poverty reduction through tourism work. The paper reflects on lessons that might be learned from the SNV story.

Tourism revenue sharing policy at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda: a policy arrangements approach

Debates on how to deliver conservation benefits to communities living close to protected high-biodiversity areas have preoccupied conservationists for over 20 years. Tourism revenue sharing (TRS) has become a widespread policy intervention in Africa and elsewhere where charismatic populations of wildlife remain. This paper analyzes TRS policy at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP), Uganda, from a policy arrangements perspective. It is based on data collected at BINP and three surrounding parishes, using qualitative methods. It concludes that the governance capacity of the TRS policy arrangement at BINP is low due to the structural incongruence of the dimensions of the policy arrangement (analyzed in terms of actors, resources, rules of the game and discourses). Despite the participatory rhetoric of policy reforms, the Uganda Wildlife Authority remains the most powerful actor: it has control over resources and consequently determines the rules of the game. Local communities do not feel adequately compensated for conservation costs. This issue is exacerbated by weak communications with local people, problems of fair distribution locally and nationally, corruption claims and powerful local elites. To maximize TRS’ ability to contribute to conservation through development, inequities in the design of the TRS and dispersion of benefits need to be addressed.

Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism in Manuel Antonio and Texel: A Tourist Perspective

This paper examines tourist perceptions of sustainability in Manuel Antonio/Quepos, Costa Rica and Texel, The Netherlands. It also reviews tourist opinions of site-specific sustainability aspects and assesses differences between tourist types and their perceptions of sustainability. The ecological dimension of sustainability was perceived the most important, followed by social-cultural and economic dimensions. Among tourists to Manuel Antonio/Quepos there was no distinctive difference between the last two dimensions while the economic dimension was far less important among Texel tourists. Loss of local lifestyles and processes of urbanisation were the most serious problems perceived in Manuel Antonio/Quepos. For Texel, a fewrespondents indicated problems such as increase of prices, urbanisation and loss of local lifestyles. Results demonstrate tourist awareness of sustainability issues and that in the long run this awareness might lead to changes in tourist preferences.

Planning Host and Guest Interactions: Moving Beyond the Empty Meeting Ground in African Encounters

In many senses viewing the ‘other’ has always been a part of the tourist activity of dominant cultures. The ‘other’ has been seen as a source of difference and excitement with possibilities for exotic pleasure while at the same time dominant cultures have reinforced their own sense of superiority through viewing the ‘other’. The view from the ‘other’ is now becoming a part of tourism research and enabling mechanisms for this view are being developed in tourism planning. This paper seeks to examine how we can move beyond MacCannell’s view of the contact between tourists and hosts as an ‘empty meeting ground’. Just as postcolonial theorists have been critical of the exclusion of the ‘other’ in tourism theory, we argue for the voice of the ‘other’ to be heard in tourism planning practices. In this paper we examine the extent this is able to bring benefits to the process of community-based tourist development in developing countries such as Tanzania and Kenya. The paper theoretically scrutinises the relation between and the fluidity of the concepts of tourism, communities and power and the actuality of approaches to tourism planning that do not involve a submissive, subservient, exoticised and inferiorised view of the ‘other’. The particulars of inclusion of the voice of the ‘other’ bring some fresh insights to Western notions of community-based tourism planning.

The implementation of an environmental management system for Dutch tour operators: an actor-network perspective

This paper uses an actor-network perspective on innovation to examine the introduction of a mandatory product-oriented environmental management system (in Dutch: Product en MilieuZorg or PMZ) for Dutch outbound tour operators by the Netherlands Association of Tour Operators (VRO). In-depth interviews and a quantitative analysis of the actions taken by 126 outbound tour operators revealed that the introduction of the PMZ was extensively negotiated. The results show the various stages of implementation and three types of tour operators: ‘unconvinced minor participants’, ‘open-minded yet sceptical participants’, and ‘loyal actors’. The analysis also demonstrates that on average, tour operators made 13.6 actions, which is almost three times the minimum requirement (five) set by the VRO. Between them, the 126 tour operators have undertaken a total of 1710 actions, of which over 87% concern the environmental dimension of sustainability. Unquestionably, the introduction of PMZ helped tour operators to identify some of the environmental consequences of their operations, and to single out and implement environmental friendly initiatives. However, the rather general criteria and lax entry requirements at this stage led to an abundance of proposed actions by tour operators that were often ‘soft’ and indeterminate. New rounds of translations are necessary to maintain the momentum.

The emergence of institutional innovations in tourism: the evolution of the African Wildlife Foundation's tourism conservation enterprises.

This paper examines the evolving and innovatory role of the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), an NGO with charitable status, in dealing with the challenge of protecting wildlife outside state-protected areas. Drawing on the theoretical framework of institutional entrepreneurship, we historically trace AWFs engagement in conservation tourism, describing the complexities of how its actions evolved into the new organizational form of tourism conservation enterprises. We identify four key mechanisms – its “glocal” scope of action, awareness of policy and market voids, experimentation and hiring business professionals – that explain why AWF became aware, motivated and open to developing this organizational form. Lessons emerging from this process include that conservation NGOs should act as “opportunity seekers”, focus on incremental rather than radical innovations, note voids and ambiguities in governmental policies that provide opportunities for non-state actors to assume the role of institutional entrepreneur, and hire staff skilled in business, tourism and strategic management besides staff with the more conventional conservation skills in order to effectively engage in conservation tourism. Overall, the paper notes the importance of commercial conservation tourism approaches for the work of protected areas worldwide, and in using tourism as a poverty alleviation tool in less developed countries.

Tourism-conservation enterprises as a land-use strategy in Kenya.

Since the early 1990s, nature conservation organizations in Eastern and Southern Africa have increasingly attempted to integrate their objectives with those of international development organizations, the land-use objectives of local communities and the commercial objectives of tourism businesses, in order to find new solutions for the protection of nature and wildlife outside state-protected areas. The increased inclusion of the market in conservation initiatives has led to diverse institutional arrangements involving various societal actors, such as private game reserves, conservancies and conservation enterprises. The Koija Starbeds ecolodge in Kenya – a partnership between communities, private investors and a non-governmental organization – serves as a case study for emerging institutional arrangements aimed at enabling value creation for communities from nature conservation. Based on a content analysis of data from individual semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews, as well as a document and literature review, this article reveals a range of benefits for community livelihood and conservation. It also identifies a range of longer term governance challenges, such as the need to address local political struggles, the relations between partners and transparency and accountability in the arrangement.

Compensating for livestock killed by lions: payment for environmental services as a policy arrangement

To address human–wildlife conflicts and the related threat of extinction of the African lion, in 2003, the Maasailand Preservation Trust established a fund at the Mbirikani Group Ranch in southern Kenya to provide monetary compensation for livestock killed by wildlife. In this paper, the policy arrangement approach (PAA) is used to analyse this arrangement as a form of payment for environmental services (PES). Although there has been a considerable reduction in the number of lions killed, the analysis reveals several limitations of this arrangement, including three main side effects, namely it has initiated a process that is difficult to sustain or reverse, created a new cycle of dependence and widened the gap between different groups in the community. In conclusion, the drawbacks of this type of compensation fund must be addressed by combining such arrangements with other public and private policies and initiatives. Careful examination and comparison of different kinds of experiments with PES-like arrangements are required to further build understanding of the potential and different contributions of public and private, market-based initiatives in biodiversity governance.