Phase 2: Assessment - (PDF, 101 mb) - USAID

Community Participation in Ecotourism in Ecuador
highly beneficial to facilitate better cross-fertilization of these communities with
those organizations that have years of experience implementing community
development programs. An international conference to set guidelines for community
participation in ecotourism will be an important step in creating a guidelines
document to be used for international reference.
• More experts with community development experience, including those in the
fields of development anthropology and sociology, should be hired to assess the
sociocultural setting before community ecotourism project are implemented and
to assist on an on-going basis during project implementation. Proper social and
cultural assessment, allow ecotourism development projects to be launched with
adequate community support and empowerment. While no project can ever expect to
have full community support, talented and inspired leadership at the local level from
the outset of the project supported by a broad cross-section of local constituents is
more likely to lead to a successful outcome.
Issue: Conflicting Land-use Strategies
Local communities are coping with conflicting land-use strategies when, in fact, they
are the entity least capable of handling the social and environmental issues created
by mega-development strategies, such as oil development and logging. While the
government of Ecuador supports oil development for reasons that include its importance
to the national economy, it does not require that revenue from these enterprises be used to
minimize social and cultural impacts.
The Nature Conservancy 27