University of Aarhus ECOTOURISM AS A WAY TO PROTECT ...
University of Aarhus ECOTOURISM AS A WAY TO PROTECT ...
University of Aarhus ECOTOURISM AS A WAY TO PROTECT ...
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Ecotourism as a sustainable way to protect nature<br />
Encouraging tourists and tour operators to give donations is another way<br />
to increase income for national parks. Tourists and tour operators may very<br />
voluntarily pay if they recognise that their money can contribute to the<br />
conservation <strong>of</strong> parks (Stefan, 1999, UNEP, 2002). The Costa Rica tour<br />
operators have donated US$ 25,000 to the Costa Rica Park Service in the early<br />
1990s, US-based tour operators help to establish 100,000 ha rain forest for<br />
biodiversity research in the Peruvian Amazon (UNEP, 2002).<br />
Furthermore, income from local people who participated in ecotourism<br />
activities sometimes also contributes to protect national parks. In Brazil,<br />
community-based ecotourism has provided 20% <strong>of</strong> net pr<strong>of</strong>its needed for the<br />
management <strong>of</strong> the reserve (WWF, 2001).<br />
Finally, ecotourism aims to hire locally staff businesses (Megan, 1993)<br />
including local <strong>of</strong>fice, field staff, transport - vehicle & boat rental services,<br />
accommodations - hotels, lodges, camps and restaurants; it also consume local<br />
supplies from food and craft vendors but avoid all products made from rare<br />
species. While conventional tourism doesn’t consider much to benefit for local<br />
people, economic business is largely in hand <strong>of</strong> city-tour operators. In general,<br />
ecotourism employs local people in many activities and has created wide range<br />
<strong>of</strong> jobs. From these activities and jobs, local communities can improve their<br />
income. Sven (2000) show that ecotourism in Amazon has brought much<br />
benefits for local people, especially from food, handicraft selling and cultural<br />
services. In Nepal, the local communities have participated in different<br />
ecotourism activities, 1,100 villagers have been employed by hotel industrial<br />
and <strong>of</strong> 104 local people (74%) were trained as a nature guides with their salary<br />
to be increased by 36% afterwards (Marnie, et. al., 1998). Up to now, tourism<br />
activities have globally created about 200 million jobs (World Travel and<br />
Tourism Council, 2000).<br />
30