Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
tourism initiative is commenced in a rural area.These expectations seem to arise as
a result of the emphasis by government, development agencies, tour operators and
international organizations on tourism as a possible source of economic develop-
ment. These expectations seem particularly acute if the community have some
form of tenure or ownership in the business (Jenkins et al, 1998; Briedenhann and
Wickens, 2004; Saarinen, 2007; Simpson, 2008a). However, the ability of tourism
initiatives to meet communities' expectations appears to be questionable and their
expectations seem in the main to be unrealistic and unfulfilled as the economic and
livelihood benefits communities receive from tourism are not only lower than
expected but also limited to a small minority of the community (Sharpley, 2002;
Saarinen, 2007; Spenceley and Goodwin, 2007; Simpson, 2008a, 2008b).
Whilst the protocol provided a coherent and effective framework within
which to capture relevant information, implementation posed several challenges.
In addition to significant demands on time, finance and human resources, the
study identified a wide range of challenges relating to the assessment of impacts,
relationships and processes, and difficulties associated with capturing diverse and
complex information were experienced. The availability of baseline data with
which to gauge the type and rate of changes in the communities since the
commencement of the tourism initiatives was limited, including specific figures
on health and education, income levels, population size and the numbers of
people in households. This was to be expected due to the location of the study
sites and rural nature of the environment, but despite these constraints an accept-
able baseline profile was established of the tourism initiatives and their
communities. Causality was also difficult to establish: in some instances it was
problematic to define categorically whether the presence or actions of the initia-
tive had affected change in any way, and secondary effects were also hard to
attribute to the tourism initiative. In order to overcome these problems compre-
hensive long-term studies would be required; the protocol could be implemented
again after a suitable period of time had passed, perhaps two to five years, allow-
ing impacts to become clearer and hence the analysis more accurate.
The collection and interpretation of the data were further complicated by the
presence of hierarchies and elites. Within the communities these long-established
tribal systems were accentuated by the ownership arrangements in the tourism
initiatives at the case study sites. In each case the community involved in the
tenure of the tourism initiative was represented by a community trust which
ostensibly was independent from the tribal system, however, the established
hierarchies appeared to be so strong that they resulted in the existing elite system
subsuming the appointed directors of the trust. This situation appeared to have
fostered a culture of secrecy with regard to the finances of the community trusts
and made it extremely difficult to gather precise data on amounts that had been
paid to the respective community trusts and what the money had been spent on.
Information collected through the series of semi-structured interviews and the
participatory approaches suggested that in both case studies there had been
incidences of misappropriation and corruption and very little, if any, of the money
had found its way to benefiting the community as a whole.
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