Publisher :
Place of publication :
Publication year : 0
Thematic : Ecotourism
Language : English
Note
In present era of globalization and modernization there is growing concern of indigenous
knowledge and the resource management especially in the case of CPR, indigenous people and
associated development activities. On the name of developmental projects many irreversible
negative impacts has been identified on the environment like species extinction, destruction of
natural resources, loss of traditional knowledge of the indigenous tribal people etc. Particularly
the Indigenous Peoples are becoming increasingly vulnerable to exploitation on the name of
development activities, where traditional wisdom and knowledge and natural resources have
been expropriated for business interests. These are serious concern for the survival of present
world communities.
Recently Ecotourism has emerged as development tool, which aims to protect the natural
environment and cultural diversity by attracting the ecotourist and generating the source of
revenue for the local people without harming the nature. This has been supported by various
global processes These processes has agreed to resolve the crucial problems related to
indigenous people, their ownership rights and conservation of natural resources by clearer
understanding and recognition of the strong ethical and spiritual dimensions and survival spirit of
Indigenous Peoples in the changing world where Ecotourism can prove supportive as it works at
local scale and incorporates land-scape and people-scape in particular.
The success of ecotourism activities at an operational level depends upon an array of factors
owing to its nature. Ecotourism can be the thin edge of a wedge, which opens the door to mass
tourism and has every possible scope to be used by general tourism practitioners as brand
name. This very concept could be misused to fulfill their economic motives. Scope of
implementing certification concept is strong in the process of sustainable development of
Ecotourism. Therefore, there is need to develop an applied tool to measure threshold of tourism
impacts and change in socio-economic and environmental status of the site through Criteria and
Indicator (C & I), under the framework of sustainability. The development of C&I is not an end in
itself, it is a continuous process which encompasses the societies responsibility for sustainable
livelihood generation through community based Ecotourism without environmental degradation
and erosion of cultural values.
Implementing C & I in the field, in particular requires community participation in CPRs
management to gain the understanding and support of the local people, so that they can respect
and contribute to conservation of the natural resources to keep its environmental value intact.
Under this purview, C & I has been developed with participation of the local people at village
level by using PRA techniques and organizing field level workshops. The research finding has
been used to test the ecotourism performance at two study areas in Sikkim, India. Under this
study, various results have been achieved in social, economic and ecological dimensions. In one
of the study area the environmental and cultural values are intact because the indigenous people
have developed a sense of belongingness, environmental awareness and worked collectively to
maintain nature. They have developed local level institutions, which keeps an eye on the process
of ecotourism development and share their experiences to make others aware. While in the other
site, the local community involvement is negligible and could be linked with globalization. The
results shows that due to economic motive and less involvement of local community in the
Abstract and Paper Submitted for the IASCP Bi-Annual Conference on “ The Commons in an Age of Global
Transition: Challenges, Risk and Opportunities†at Oaxaca, Mexico from 9-14 August, 2004.
process of Ecotourism, the area is leading towards environmental degradation and erosion of
cultural values and is further prone to serious threat of migration of the local community.
Go to source
Keywords : Moray Firth
Encoded by : Pauline Carmel Joy Eje
