Tourism and Community Development Issues - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 185

act of choice in commodifying aspects of their culture, while choosing to
keep other aspects safe from the tourist gaze, such as in the case of the
Pataxó Indians of Porto Seguro, Brazil described by Grünewald (2012).
Cultural empowerment under conditions of oppression are thus not
entirely precluded when state and tourism interests intervene, but the hope
is that tourism can foster rather than hinder cultural well-being, self-
determination, self-reliance, sense of pride and respect, local control and sus-
tainable livelihoods (Grünewald, 2002; Higgins-Desbiolles et al. , 2010) (see
Chapter 7). Empowering and enabling better control by those who stand to
be most impacted by their goods and resources being shared with the tourist
means that mechanisms and approaches to CBT must address the political,
economic, marketing and policy linkages and stakeholders in the wider
region and global context in which the local is embedded. Bianchi (2002),
Hall (2007a) and Mosedale and Albrecht (2011), among others, call for a
relational understanding of tourism-related spaces and the socio-economic,
political and cultural processes and practices that transcend multiple scales
in tourism.
Ecotourism and community-based conservation
Whether in developing or developed countries, an important principle of
ecotourism, and its conservation objectives of mitigating adverse effects on
the human-ecological relationship and facilitating biodiversity health, is the
involvement of local communities in conservation (see Fennell, 2003). With
increased recognition of the connection between poverty and environmental
health, community development objectives such as capacity building, train-
ing and ensuring economic and socio-cultural benefits at the local level have
gradually gained greater significance over the years. The International
Ecotourism Society succinctly captures this interrelated, often interdepen-
dent, relationship as 'responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the
environment and sustains the well-being of local people' (Honey, 1999: 6).
Various other forms of community involvement have arisen as a conse-
quence, such as indigenous co-management, community-based conservation
(CBC), and community-based wildlife management, combined with non-
consumptive activities such as photographic tourism.
Political ecology studies show that a crucial factor underlying environ-
mental degradation and human poverty is institutionalized inequalities in
access to, and use of, natural resources (see, for example, Stonich, 1998).
Power disparities are especially exacerbated by tourism policies and practices
that result in the inequitable distribution of environmental benefits and costs
among low-income groups, minority and indigenous populations. Satria
et al. 's (2006) study of community-based coral reef management in Gili
Indah, Indonesia, shows how the failure to mediate conflict between fishers
and tourism entrepreneurs (originally fishers and of the same ethnic