Impacts of Institutional Tourism on Development and Conservation in East Africa and India
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
[Downloaded free from http://www.conservationandsociety.org on Thursday, March 20, 2014, IP: 130.238.171.127] || Click here to download free Android application for this journal Conservation and Society 11(4): 375-390, 2013 Article Tiger, Lion, and Human Life in the Heart of Wilderness: Impacts of Institutional Tourism on Development and Conservation in East Africa and India Nilanjan Ghosha,# and Emil Uddhammarb aMulti Commodity Exchange of India Limited, Mumbai, India bDepartment of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden #Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] Abstract This article tests the hypothesis on whether tourism is an important institutional factor in reconciling the conflicting goals of conservation and development. The study entails data from field surveys across protected areas including the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern Tanzania, and the Corbett National Park in northern India. With human development defined in terms of ‘stages of progress’ (SOP) delineated by the respondents themselves, the study finds indicative evidences of the validity of the posed hypothesis in the two nations, in varying proportions. Factors not related to tourism, like incomes from livestock, have affected development in Tanzania, though not in India. Keywords: human development, stages of progress, conservation, tourism, community, Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Corbett Tiger Reserve INTRODUCTION (Uddhammar 2006; Schmidt-Soltau 2010), thereby aggravating the conflict between conservation and traditional economic The apparent conflict between conservation and development in activities (Uddhammar and Ghosh 2009). This necessitates and around the protected areas of the developing world arises as innovative thinking on new institutional arrangements that the poor in those areas are reliant on forest resources (Dewi et al. could reconcile conservation and development, and, in the best 2005; Chan et al. 2007; Torri and Herrmann 2010). This leads of worlds, make them benefit from each other. to a decline in forests, much to the detriment of both flora and However, the possible existence of a symbiotic relationship fauna. Man-animal conflict is also a special feature in these parts between humans and forests has been a matter of debate among of the world. Wild animals cause losses to property, cattle, and scholars. One school strongly believes that forest resources even human life. Hence, in most cases, the human habitat in and can be put to use to help improve the livelihoods of the poor around wilderness does not hold a very kind opinion about the (Scherr et al. 2002; Dewi et al. 2005). There are others who wild predators. In most cases in the developing nations, protecting believe that forests can provide only limited opportunity biodiversity has resulted in a shrinkage of traditional economic to contribute to poverty reduction (Wunder 2001). Part of opportunities for the local population due to ensuing restrictions the discrepancy between the conflicting views originates on cattle ranching, farming or fuel wood collection. People from the difference in assumptions about the institutional have often been evicted altogether from the protected areas mechanisms for creating new opportunities for rural people to take advantage of forest resources (e.g., Sunderlin et al. Access this article online 2005). Publications by several researchers like Agrawal and Quick Response Code: Clark (2001), Anuradha et al. (2001), Borrini-Feyerabend et Website: al. (2003), and Greiber (2009) advocate specific institutional www.conservationandsociety.org mechanisms to reverse the trade-off between conservation and development. An important entry-point of this article lies with DOI: an attempt to understand the nature of the impact of such a 10.4103/0972-4923.125750 specific institutional mechanism as the exogenous stimulus on the endogenous conservation-development dynamics. Copyright: © Ghosh and Uddhammar 2013. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and distribution of the article, provided the original work is cited. [Downloaded free from http://www.conservationandsociety.org on Thursday, March 20, 2014, IP: 130.238.171.127] || Click here to download free Android application for this journal 376 / Ghosh and Uddhammar In this article, tourism is hypothesised as an important Africa (lion, elephant, zebra, etc.) is no less renowned. At the institutional variable affecting the trade-off between conservation same time, the poverty of the rural human population adjacent and development. Duffy (2002) and Vanasselt (2003) feel that to the protected areas in these regions is often striking. Selecting unregulated tourism can bring about major environmental losses, protected areas in these countries provides the opportunity with marginal financial gains. Fennell (1999), Wearing and Neil to examine whether protected areas with a strong capacity (1999), and Ulfstrand (2003) are, however, optimistic. Kiss for tourism really can make a difference to the well-being of (2004), Zapata et al. (2011), and Uddhammar (2006) emphasise the people surrounding them, and also study the consequent the need for necessary institutional structures for success of impact of wildlife on human economy. Tourism in East Africa community-based tourism1 in promoting the dual objectives. fluctuates between being the most important and the second- We draw our hypothesis from this ongoing debate in most important export product, and the safari destinations in the international literature, and pose it as: tourism as an institutional region are world-renowned. Around 90 % of travellers to East intervention can reverse the trade-off between conservation and Africa are foreign tourists. The Serengeti-Ngorongoro zone in development, thereby generating employment and income in Tanzania is a typical case representing this phenomenon of high the sector. In order to test this hypothesis, we have conducted international tourism, as also the case of critical livelihoods of surveys in Serengeti National Park (NP) and the Ngorongoro locals being linked to the tourism economy. Conservation Area (CA) in northern Tanzania, and the Corbett India is interesting not because international tourism to Tiger Reserve in northern India. Eventual analysis has been protected areas is conspicuous—international tourists comprise carried out on the basis of primary data (mostly based on only 20 % of the total number of visitors; 80 % is domestic perception), as also some related secondary information. So tourism, mostly from urban elites (Uddhammar 2006)—but far, despite the raging international debate, there are hardly any because it has a conspicuous biodiversity that is both well studies that test such a hypothesis for the developing world in known, to a large extent red-listed, and under severe pressure. In two completely contrasting settings, which would lend further India, Corbett Tiger Reserve in the northern part of the country applicability to the posed hypothesis. An important aspect is was chosen for the study. Interestingly, although most tourists the methodological issue, where we define development from come from within the country, more than half the total revenue a local well-being perspective, following Krishna (2004a, b), derives from foreign tourists. Thus, the global connection and conservation on the basis of a composite sighting index. with the Corbett park is quite strong (Uddhammar 2006). Such a methodology has not been adopted so far in order to Again, with a majority of employees in the camps and the park test this hypothesis—this is an important contribution of this being recruited locally from the region, the local connection article to the literature base. is also highly prevalent. Tourism, as such, is still emerging Apart from the methodological perspective, the contribution in the region, and has advanced only in the new millennium of this article to the literature is also the perspective it provides (Uddhammar and Ghosh 2009). Therefore, the two cases from its departure from neoclassical valuation frameworks based from developing economies offer some interesting features to on which often such analyses are carried out (e.g., Beharry compare and contrast in the context of the hypothesis posed. and Scarpa 2009; Guha and Ghosh 2009; Lange and Jiddawi The article is divided into seven sections. In the second 2009, among others). Here, the assessments of two comparable section, the hypothesis is explained in the context of social- institutional frameworks have been conducted taking into ecological systems (SES) (Ostrom 2005, 2007). In the third consideration how institutional arrangements and tourism as a section, the study sites are described in light of the variables critical variable affect two target variables like conservation and described in SES. The fourth section briefly talks about the development, in a social-ecological system (SES). methodology used. In the following section, we present some descriptive statistics on the ‘stages of progress’ (SOP) which Selection of the study areas delineate development in this context. Since development and poverty have been defined by the respondent community, The idea here was to find well-known and frequently visited this also speaks a lot about the existing culture, tradition, and tourist destinations in developing countries with prevalent social norms of the community