Impacts and Potentials of Ecotourism and Community-Based Tourism for Conservation and Development
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Impacts and Potentials of Ecotourism and Community-Based Tourism for Conservation and Development Steve Borchardt Master Thesis Supervised by Dr. Robert Steiger & Univ.-Prof. Dr. Bruno Abegg University of Innsbruck Institute of Geography Faculty of Geo- and Atmospheric Sciences June 2018 Abstract CBT and ecotourism can be useful instruments for making valuable contributions to both, nature conservation and community development. While tourism in general, can be a business incubator and economic catalysator as well, CBT and ecotourism expand on these impacts and specifically focus on participatory aspects and empowerment of the community in their development scope. Furthermore, ecotourism utilises the touristic potential of natural resources to contribute to its conservation, while CBT also strives to preserve intact landscapes in accordance with the sustainable tourism principles. Understanding the impacts of these tourism forms on the community and the environment, is essential to identify enabling and hampering factors for a further improvement of the concepts’ contributions to conservation and development. Following up on this, the present thesis puts its focal point on the impacts and the potentials of CBT and ecotourism for nature conservation and community development in Kyrgyzstan. Therefore, the tourism development during the Soviet Era and after gaining independence has to be understood respectively in order to grasp current tourism development trends and to understand the power structures and relationships between the government, the private sector and external assistance organisations as these may indicate possible future perspectives and major obstacles for further development. Semi-structured expert interviews have been conducted to obtain necessary data about these aspects in the field. The results showed that the development of CBT and ecotourism is still at an initial stage in Kyrgyzstan. The Soviet heritage with mass tourism structures being located at the north shore of lake Issyk-Kul, lead to a neglection of small-scale tourism forms for local development by the government and thus, a lack of support and capacities. Anyways, CBT and ecotourism activities – whose development has usually been greatly supported by external assistance organisations - do contribute to community development in many areas, basically by providing jobs with additional or partially even alternative incomes for local community members and by supporting economic growth in the community due to the multiplier effect. Despite of that, participatory aspects are largely ignored, and the established CBT structures do not strive for an involvement of all community members and are hence, just another tourism competitor in the growing tourism market in the study area. As current tourist numbers are still on a low level, environmental strains are rather insignificant which is why the contribution to conservation is hard to estimate and beside some cleaning activities along the most popular mountain treks in some poorly managed National Parks, supplemented by environmental awareness-raising due to educational programmes that are usually sponsored by external assistance organisations, nothing much is done. Concluding from that, the present thesis contributes to a further understanding of the impacts of ecotourism and CBT on the community development as well as on nature conservation and furthermore, to the determination of hampering and supporting factors for enhancing the development and conservation potential of these tourism forms. I Acknowledgements I would like to thank everybody, who contributed in any way to the completion of the present thesis. First of all, I would like to express my great appreciation for the support that was provided by the Mountain Societies Research Institute (MSRI) of the University of Central Asia in Bishkek. Especially Dr. Marc Foggin, current director of the institute, you have been such a great help and always offered your valuable support in all matters. Besides, I also thank the rest of the staff of the MSRI for their numerous advises, helpful connections and for their essential support in translations. To my supervisors at the university of Innsbruck, Dr. Robert Steiger and Prof. Dr. Bruno Abegg, thank you for supervising my thesis, for guiding me through the process of developing, conducting and analysing my research and for supporting me with your experience and expertise whenever it was necessary. Furthermore, I would like to thank Dr. Yash Veer Bhatnagar for giving me the opportunity to work for the “Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program”, which also provided me with additional insights in the study area and supported the establishment of further connections for the field work. In this context, I would also like to thank Pakiza Shirinova for her support in establishing further connections. To my Kyrgyz host family in Bishkek, Meerim, Kamchybek, Ymyt, Gulnura, Adilet and the rest of this lovely, hospitable family, thank you for everything you did for me, for introducing me to the Kyrgyz culture, the Kyrgyz language and the delicious Kyrgyz cuisine. Especially to Meerim, you were such a valuable support as a translator in the field and as a friend in general, thank you very much. To all of my interviewees, who sacrificed their time for the me, thank you for being so opened, welcoming and supportive to me and my research. It was such a pleasure to conduct this fieldwork in such a convenient atmosphere with such friendly people. To my girlfriend, for being so supportive in the whole process of completing this thesis. I also like to thank all of my friends and my family for being such a great company all the time and for providing so many valuable advices whenever it was needed. Last but not least, I would like to thank the University of Innsbruck for granting me the KWA scholarship, I would not have been able to conduct my research in Kyrgyzstan without this great support. II Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................................... I Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. II Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................. III Annex ..................................................................................................................................................... V List of Acronyms and Abbreviations .................................................................................................... VI List of Tables ...................................................................................................................................... VIII List of Figures ....................................................................................................................................... IX 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Objectives and research question ................................................................................................. 2 1.2. Thesis structure ............................................................................................................................. 3 2. Theory ................................................................................................................................................. 5 2.1. From Conventional Mass Tourism towards Alternative Tourism forms...................................... 5 2.2. The concept of sustainability as basis for sustainable tourism ..................................................... 9 2.3. The emergence of sustainable tourism ....................................................................................... 12 2.3.1. Nature-based tourism and nature tourism ............................................................................ 12 2.3.2. Ecotourism ........................................................................................................................... 13 2.3.4. Excursus to soft tourism ...................................................................................................... 18 2.3.5. Sustainable tourism ............................................................................................................. 19 2.3.6. Responsible Tourism ........................................................................................................... 30 2.4. Community-Based Tourism ....................................................................................................... 33 2.4.1. The concept of community .................................................................................................. 35 2.4.2. The concept of participation ................................................................................................ 35 2.4.3. Critique of the concept ........................................................................................................ 38 2.4.4. Current research trends in the field of CBT ........................................................................ 39 2.5. The synergy of ecotourism and CBT .......................................................................................... 39 3. Methods ............................................................................................................................................