IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v73y2012icp47-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ecotourism and the development of indigenous communities: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Author

Listed:
  • Coria, Jessica
  • Calfucura, Enrique

Abstract

A large part of the literature analyzing the links between biodiversity conservation and community development assumes that nature-based tourism managed by indigenous communities will result not only in conservation of natural resources but also in increased development. In practice, ecotourism has often failed to deliver the expected benefits to indigenous communities due to a combination of factors, including shortages in the endowments of human, financial and social capital within the community, lack of mechanisms for a fair distribution of the economic benefits of ecotourism, and land insecurity. Based on a review of experiences, we analyze the complex interaction among the factors shaping the success and failure of ecotourism experiences in indigenous communities, and we stress the need for a better approach to enhance the indigenous communities' livelihood possibilities coming from ecotourism, as well as to promote land tenure and communities' empowerment.

Suggested Citation

  • Coria, Jessica & Calfucura, Enrique, 2012. "Ecotourism and the development of indigenous communities: The good, the bad, and the ugly," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 47-55.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:73:y:2012:i:c:p:47-55
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.10.024
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800911004538
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.10.024?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blackman, Allen & Woodward, Richard T., 2010. "User financing in a national payments for environmental services program: Costa Rican hydropower," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 1626-1638, June.
    2. Renaud Lapeyre, 2010. "Community-based tourism as a sustainable solution to maximise impacts locally? The Tsiseb Conservancy case, Namibia," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(5), pages 757-772.
    3. Johannesen, Anne Borge & Skonhoft, Anders, 2005. "Tourism, poaching and wildlife conservation: what can integrated conservation and development projects accomplish?," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 208-226, October.
    4. Winkler, Ralph, 2011. "Why do ICDPs fail?: The relationship between agriculture, hunting and ecotourism in wildlife conservation," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 55-78, January.
    5. Naidoo, Robin & Adamowicz, Wiktor L., 2005. "Biodiversity and nature-based tourism at forest reserves in Uganda," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 159-178, May.
    6. Dustin Becker, Constance, 2003. "Grassroots to Grassroots: Why Forest Preservation was Rapid at Loma Alta, Ecuador," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 163-176, January.
    7. Clements, Tom & John, Ashish & Nielsen, Karen & An, Dara & Tan, Setha & Milner-Gulland, E.J., 2010. "Payments for biodiversity conservation in the context of weak institutions: Comparison of three programs from Cambodia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 1283-1291, April.
    8. Blaikie, Piers, 2006. "Is Small Really Beautiful? Community-based Natural Resource Management in Malawi and Botswana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 1942-1957, November.
    9. Kramer, Randall & Schaik, Carel van & Johnson, Julie (ed.), 1997. "Last Stand: Protected Areas and the Defense of Tropical Biodiversity," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195095548, Decembrie.
    10. Caitlin Mary Lepper & Jessica Schroenn Goebel, 2010. "Community-based natural resource management, poverty alleviation and livelihood diversification: A case study from northern Botswana," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(5), pages 725-739.
    11. Subhrendu K. Pattanayak & Sven Wunder & Paul J. Ferraro, 2010. "Show Me the Money: Do Payments Supply Environmental Services in Developing Countries?," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 4(2), pages 254-274, Summer.
    12. Fisher, Brendan & Christopher, Treg, 2007. "Poverty and biodiversity: Measuring the overlap of human poverty and the biodiversity hotspots," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 93-101, April.
    13. Alpizar, Francisco, 2006. "The pricing of protected areas in nature-based tourism: A local perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 294-307, February.
    14. Frost, Peter G.H. & Bond, Ivan, 2008. "The CAMPFIRE programme in Zimbabwe: Payments for wildlife services," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(4), pages 776-787, May.
    15. Robert Hearne & C. Santos, 2005. "Tourists‘ and Locals‘ Preferences Toward Ecotourism Development in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 303-318, September.
    16. Sommerville, Matthew & Jones, Julia P.G. & Rahajaharison, Michael & Milner-Gulland, E.J., 2010. "The role of fairness and benefit distribution in community-based Payment for Environmental Services interventions: A case study from Menabe, Madagascar," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 1262-1271, April.
    17. Leopoldo Dimas & Susan Kandel & Deborah Barry & Herman Rosa, 2004. "Compensation for Environmental Services and Rural Communities: Lessons from the Americas," Working Papers wp96, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    18. Barrett, Christopher B. & Arcese, Peter, 1995. "Are Integrated Conservation-Development Projects (ICDPs) Sustainable? On the conservation of large mammals in sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(7), pages 1073-1084, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bremer, Leah L. & Farley, Kathleen A. & Lopez-Carr, David & Romero, José, 2014. "Conservation and livelihood outcomes of payment for ecosystem services in the Ecuadorian Andes: What is the potential for ‘win–win’?," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 8(C), pages 148-165.
    2. Aldashev, Gani & Vallino, Elena, 2019. "The dilemma of NGOs and participatory conservation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    3. Zijin Xie & Ayumi Onuma, 2021. "Biodiversity Conservation under ICDPs in a Bioeconomic Model: Nonprofit vs For-Profit National Parks," Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series 2021-001, Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University.
    4. Schomers, Sarah & Matzdorf, Bettina, 2013. "Payments for ecosystem services: A review and comparison of developing and industrialized countries," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 16-30.
    5. Hayes, Tanya & Murtinho, Felipe & Wolff, Hendrik, 2015. "An institutional analysis of Payment for Environmental Services on collectively managed lands in Ecuador," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 81-89.
    6. Van Hecken, Gert & Bastiaensen, Johan & Vásquez, William F., 2012. "The viability of local payments for watershed services: Empirical evidence from Matiguás, Nicaragua," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 169-176.
    7. Clot, Sophie & Andriamahefazafy, Fano & Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette & Méral, Philippe, 2015. "Compensation and Rewards for Environmental Services (CRES) and efficient design of contracts in developing countries. Behavioral insights from a natural field experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 85-96.
    8. Benjamin S. Thompson, 2019. "Payments for ecosystem services and corporate social responsibility: Perspectives on sustainable production, stakeholder relations, and philanthropy in Thailand," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 497-511, May.
    9. Winkler, Ralph, 2011. "Why do ICDPs fail?: The relationship between agriculture, hunting and ecotourism in wildlife conservation," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 55-78, January.
    10. Maldonado, Jorge H. & Moreno-Sanchez, Rocio & Henao-Henao, Juan P. & Bruner, Aaron, 2019. "Does exclusion matter in conservation agreements? A case of mangrove users in the Ecuadorian coast using participatory choice experiments," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    11. Kate Cave & Bernhard Heikoop & Emmanuelle Quillérou & Corinne Schuster-Wallace, 2015. "Ecotourism: reinforcing local demand for a “waste to wealth” approach to sanitation," Working Papers hal-01954811, HAL.
    12. Alain Karsenty & Driss Ezzine-De-Blas, 2016. "PES, markets and property rights: a comment on Wunder's revisited concept of PES and a proposal of conceptual framework," Working Papers hal-01262380, HAL.
    13. R A Arriagada & E O Sills & P J Ferraro & S K Pattanayak, 2015. "Do Payments Pay Off? Evidence from Participation in Costa Rica’s PES Program," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, July.
    14. Ma, Zhao & Bauchet, Jonathan & Steele, Diana & Godoy, Ricardo & Radel, Claudia & Zanotti, Laura, 2017. "Comparison of Direct Transfers for Human Capital Development and Environmental Conservation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 498-517.
    15. Vallino, Elena & Aldahsev,Gani, 2013. "NGOs and participatory conservation in developing countries: why are there inefficiencies?," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201318, University of Turin.
    16. Zijin Xie, 2022. "Government intervention in wildlife damage management: a bioeconomic analysis of wildlife damage compensation and taxation policies," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 93-115, April.
    17. Ralph Winkler, 2007. "Why do ICDPs fail? The relationship between subsistence farming, poaching and eco- tourism in wildlife and habitat conservation," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 07/76, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    18. Jespersen, Kristjan & Gallemore, Caleb, 2018. "The Institutional Work of Payments for Ecosystem Services: Why the Mundane Should Matter," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 507-519.
    19. Ola, Oreoluwa & Menapace, Luisa & Benjamin, Emmanuel & Lang, Hannes, 2019. "Determinants of the environmental conservation and poverty alleviation objectives of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 52-66.
    20. Kumar, Pushpam & Kumar, Manasi & Garrett, Lucy, 2014. "Behavioural foundation of response policies for ecosystem management: What can we learn from Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 10(C), pages 128-136.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ecotourism; Biodiversity; ICDP; Indigenous communities;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q50 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:73:y:2012:i:c:p:47-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.