Livelihoods, Conservation and Community-based Tourism in Tanzania: Potential and Performance - Responsible Tourism: Critical Issues for Conservation and Development - page 290

and operators; a number of developments have arisen on lands that were simply
allocated or sold by villages, often under unclear terms and conditions. This
'individualization' of tourism developments prevents benefits from reaching the
entire community, 12 and may also reflect the relative weakness of local collective
institutions in this locale compared to other pastoralist areas such as Loliondo. 13
Even where contracts have been formed transparently between the village
council and tour operators, problems with local revenue management are appar-
ent. In Emboreet village, 14 tourism revenues generated $126,889 in payments to
the village from 2001-2005, or an average of $25,338 annually (Sachedina,
2006). Despite these high earnings, Sachedina (2006) finds that 93 per cent of
Emboreet villagers claim that they do not receive any household benefits from
wildlife. He explains this discrepancy by noting that audits of village financial
records have showed mismanagement and significant levels of fraud in the use of
tourism revenues at the village level (Sachedina, 2006).Village governance organs
are thus effectively failing to translate substantial annual tourism revenues into
collective benefits and services, with the downward accountability of local elites to
the community that is so important in Ololosokwan apparently weak in Emboreet.
The outcome of this local governance failure is that substantial wildlife-based
tourism revenues have not resulted in strong local conservation incentives, and
collective incentives do not emerge to control land fragmentation and conversion
to agriculture. Consequently, the quality of the wildlife-based tourism resource
has declined, with negative implications for both conservation and local economic
options.
Opportunity or threat? The political economy
of tourism in Tanzania
Community-based tourism in Tanzania demonstrates the potential for generating
substantial revenues at the local level, providing new tourism products for private
operators to market, and has led to significant actions by local communities in
support of wildlife conservation in savannah landscapes. Despite these positive
outcomes, the first decade of widespread community-based tourism ventures in
Tanzania has been beset by major challenges.
Locally, the transparent and collectively accountable management of tourism
revenues has been the exception rather than the rule. In many instances tourism
revenues are captured by elites within village governments and few economic
benefits reach community members except for those benefiting directly through
employment at tourist camps. Beyond this, there are numerous examples of
decision-making processes that violate collective consensual norms, whereby a
few leaders allocate tourism concessions without involving the broader commu-
nity. Such failures of local collective decision-making undermine the objectives of
community-based tourism and serve to degrade both the tourism product and
long-term community resource interests.