National 6 (Spotlight Weekly)

Culture Of Monoculturing Wildlife Tourism In ICDP

By Subas Dhakal

Nepal is one of the vanguard nations to implement integrated conservation and development programs (ICDP) in and around protected areas. ICDP approach addresses the problem of depleting natural resources by involving the people in conservation while providing economic incentives to them. But in reality, has ICDP been successful to achieve win-win solution by making significant and sustainable impact at the community level? Not really. Why? Because ICDP approach have been repeatedly promoting monoculture activities such as ecotourism within several parts of the country at a large scale without meeting the proclaimed development objectives. That’s why renowned conservation experts have been scrutinizing such approach and advocate revising initiatives that encourages ecotourism activities to be a major component of ICDP. It is noteworthy here to mention that larger fractions of scientific community are still divided on what is ecotourism and what can it do for the sustainable development. Yet ecotourism can be as diverse as climbing the Himalayas to observing the rhinos on elephant safari and Nepal is one of the popular ecotourism destinations of the world. Prominent form of ecotourism practiced in Nepal is also a wildlife tourism that can be generalized as a smaller subset of ecotourism.

Fundamentally, wildlife tourism differs from ecotourism in a sense that earlier form involves direct or indirect observation of wildlife species and their habitat while the later may or may not. In most cases, what ICDP approach likes to call ecotourism is actually a wildlife tourism that is often perceived as a means to uplift economic standards of the people that are dependant on the natural resources within the habitat of wildlife. Wildlife tourism basically includes activities like bird watching, direct or indirect observation of endangered and protected wildlife species, taking photographs of wildlife species and their natural habitats and to a certain extent sports hunting (within legal limits) of wildlife species.

It is necessary to differentiate wildlife tourism from ecotourism because until the clarity in conceptual framework is attained, critical analysis of monoculture practice by ICDP may become ambiguous. First, agencies using ICDP approach by promoting wildlife tourism have been careful to put the ‘people first’ instead of ‘conservation’. As a result, abrupt ecotourism development has failed to comprehend intricate balance of people’s activities in terms of utilizing natural resources from a particular niche.

Such failure has caused into unsustainable utilization of natural resources that is often threatening to the continuous survival of wildlife itself. Those who deny such accusations base their opinion over the results of few studies examining the impact of wildlife tourism on a short-term basis and that in particular looks only at immediate disturbances to the behavior of wildlife. Adverse impact of wildlife tourism (if any) on the community or population of wildlife species is still poorly understood and such opinions are based on incomplete studies. Thus, bandwagon of ICDP has traveled this far through promotion of wildlife tourism without long-term and multi-dimensional studies that are required to critically analyze whether the actual economic benefits of wildlife tourism has been inflated without acknowledging the cost of such benefits.

Second, agencies claiming wildlife tourism to be a sustainable practice has acutely overlooked the inequitable economic impact on the people as well. How? During the last decade, wildlife tourism emerged as the major source of revenue in our protected areas up until the insurgency escalated. Although no specific level of threshold studies were conducted, number of tourists visiting the two world heritage national parks of Nepal can be estimated to being at its higher level of threshold possible in 1999/2000.

However, increase in number of tourists in those national parks was not evenly distributed and instead was clustered to the particular popular pockets and share of economic benefits reaching down was clearly not equitable. Why? Because overcrowding of wildlife tourists occurred in sites that were conveniently situated and where infrastructures were comparatively developed. Without such suitability and facility within other sites of the same protected areas and lack of shrewd tourism management plan in other protected areas strictly limited alternative destinations elsewhere within the country.

Thus, successful model used by ICDP that supposedly encompasses ecological and economical aspects of wildlife tourism is deficient and is applicable only to few selected areas without competition. If new destinations are to be developed and better facilities are to be provided in other areas, number of visitors will drastically dip in these popular destinations. Holistic picture of relationship between benefits of sustainable development and cost of ICDP based on projection of such incomplete model cannot and should not be applicable to all areas of the country. That is why wildlife tourism has been successful only in few conventional sites in spite of heavy investment by the several projects/programs thematic to ICDP.

Clarity in conceptual framework about wildlife tourism and its impact of wildlife conservation and sustainable development is necessary for practicing managers to make apt decisions. For instance, if program managers project their outputs within ‘logical framework’ based on inputs with an ‘assumption’ that activities related to wildlife tourism promotion would succeed without taking into account of internal risk factors that would certainly be an ‘illogical framework’. Such learning is particularly important in making adjustments to the achievable targets for byproduct of wildlife tourism activities such as souvenir shops, NTFP harvesting and other similar green-labeled products. If the logical framework of several similar ICDP makes investment in such byproducts at a mass scale, increase in number of entrepreneurships will cause the oversupply of such products regardless of whether number of tourists will increase or remain constant.

And in case, number of wildlife tourists hits rock bottom due to an external factor such as insurgency, entrepreneurs will have nothing but oversupply of such green goods without demand. As a result, failure of profound economic impact in a longer period of time will further escalate the community’s dependence on natural resources in an unsustainable manner. Therefore, its about time that agencies take initiation to diversify the existing culture of monoculturing wildlife tourism within ICDP approach and work out new practical and logical strategies by critically analyzing the cost and benefits of current wildlife tourism practices to ensure the continuous protection of the wildlife species.

(Author is a graduate student at the faculty of environment and resources studies in Mahidol University, Thailand. For suggestions and comments please contact at conservationeducation@rediffmail.com)