Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
At the regional level TRANSFORM supported the setting up of a tourist
association that could link the community-based operations and gave them a
voice. They became part of the South-North tourism routes marketing efforts.
These efforts proved relatively unsuccessful. In essence the cause of this was not
on a social or institutional level. The Richtersveld had everything in place, infra-
structure, a working CPA, etc. However, the most crucial bottleneck proved to be
that there were simply not enough tourists attracted to the area by the lack of an
appropriate marketing approach to make the projects viable.
In 2004 after realizing that TRANSFORM's ideas were persistently different
from the Richtersveld communities and that the facilitation efforts had not
reached their desired impact, it was decided to cease work in the area. It has been
interesting to see that the community have continued pursuing the tourism and
conservation economy and it will be interesting to see how they will invest the
compensation payment. The recognition of the community conservation area by
the provincial government is a wonderful step forward. This could become one of
the biggest lessons to other areas relating to how one can establish a conservation
area using the IDP and in-depth community consultation.
Rumours that the community might want to get out of the National Park
contract continue to raise their head, but we think that the community realize that
at this stage they are being subsidized by SANParks and that the park will proba-
bly always make a loss unless there is a radical change in tourism patterns.
Given the biodiversity in the area and the small population that makes
outsiders think they can make a big difference will mean that it is likely that
donors will continue to work with the community. However, the key will be to see
how sustainable these interventions are. In an economic assessment one could
argue that TRANSFORM's efforts in the Richtersveld could have created more
employment, economic revenue and capacity building opportunities had the
community agreed with the vision of involving a private partner (compared to the
revenues and employment opportunities derived from the community tourism
facilities). From one perspective, the experience with the Richtersveld case illus-
trates that for the implementation of CBNRM projects one must reach a point
where the practice of raising a common awareness among a community is linked
to an implementing perspective which allows the community to grasp the under-
lying technicalities of implementing and managing their assets. One could
perhaps argue that TRANSFORM could have played a stronger role in uniting
the community's perception and aspirations to a realistic comprehension of the
tourism industry which highlights the necessity of obtaining guidance and
support from a sector that is experienced with developing tourism lodges and
marketing the business lucratively. Experiences from TRANSFORM show that it
is essential to work with up-market tourism ventures to ensure financial return
rates to the communities. Two- and three-star lodges often do not provide suffi-
cient economic returns for the community to be financially attractive.
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