Tourism and Community Development Issues - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 199

use to ensure that it is able to keep on top of the developments and changes
that affect its vision and well-being ?
NGO roles
As illustrated by the earlier example of Canmore, Canada, local NGO's
can play a valuable role in training, education and capacity building, as well
as directing environmental conservation and benefits from tourism toward
CD. In addition to these types of activities, external NGOs like the Dutch
organization SNV in the case of Botswana's CBNRM program (see above)
help to direct external expertise and funding toward local CBC and CBT
initiatives. Dependency on such external assistance has to be watched and
weighed carefully against often much needed community development and
sustainability actions in both informal and formal economies. Social justice
organizations and NGOs such as Tourism Concern and the Ecumenical
Coalition on Third World Tourism have been established to focus on tour-
ism and socio-economic inequities in lesser developed and emerging coun-
tries (e.g. unfair labor practices), human rights injustices, plus other social
issues related to class, ethnicity and gender at the local destination level.
This is particularly challenging when the substantial informal sector in
developing regions is brought into the local-global tourism system, with too
little preparation and understanding on managing the social challenges and
cultural change that may follow, and hence may garner too few economic
gains for the poor due to neoliberal or other self-interested agendas at play
(see Scheyvens, 2007b).
The NGO 'EcoHimal' (EcoHimal Society for Cooperation Alps Hima-
laya), for instance, works with mountain tourism in lesser developed regions
to promote poverty alleviation and reduce resource depletion in regions
where under-development and poverty are prime causes of environmental
stress (EcoHimal, n.d.). One of its projects involves mountain tourism in the
Rolwaling region of the Himalayas, where it attempts to facilitate ecologi-
cally, culturally and socially acceptable tourism. EcoHimal works primarily
in cooperation with 20 Community Development Village Committees that
were formally registered as cooperatives and that take responsibility for
tourism and encourage democratic participation in the committees, and
encourage women to participate (see East et al. , 1998a, 1998b).
The role of local NGOs in assisting local residents with community
development is especially important to address in PPT approaches in indig-
enous communities. The food traditions of indigenous populations in both
the US and Mexico are changing, and diseases such as obesity and diabetes
are increasing at an alarming rate in these underserved communities. The
erosion of traditional lifestyles and traditional food practices related to indig-
enous foodways in Mexico, for example, combined with socio-economic
impacts of a declining agricultural sector (aided by North American Free