Transcript COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN ECOTOURISM: SUGGESTIONS …

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN
ECOTOURISM: SUGGESTIONS FOR
IMPROVEMENT THROUGH
REGULATORY AND MANAGEMENT
REFORM
By,
Nuraisyah Chua Abdullah
Faculty of Law
Universiti Teknologi MARA
INTRODUCTION
• Previously, the Federal government had adopted a selfeffacing attitude towards tourism due to the negative
image of tourism.
• Recently, the interest of the poor is included in the
brokerist policy equation through for example, homestay
programmes—but the success of such pro-poor policy in
the tourism industry is still at infancy.
• The paper provides suggestions for
the betterment of community based
ecotourism through regulatory and
management reform.
REVIEW OF EXISTING ECOTOURISMRELATED REGULATIONS
• National Ecotourism Plan: not sufficient to ensure a more
proactive role of the community in tourism policy-making.
• Such soft law would not be effective: relies mainly on
informing and persuading regulatees, where obligations
are either not formally backed up by sanctions, or are so
generally defined that they cannot be enforced as such.
• Soft regulation instruments can be regarded as
something between recommendation and
command-and-control regulation, which
may be either a deliberate or unconscious
choice of the legislator.
• Homestay Guidelines: less regulated tourism
product is viewed as a positive step in reducing
bureaucracy.
• However, it does not assist or encourage
homestay operators to register their tourism
products as many unregistered homestay
operations have been conducted everywhere in
Malaysia.
• Reason: ignorance of the homestay operators.
• More comprehensive law which regulates the
homestay programme in areas of safety
measures and rights and liabilities of homestay
operators would better assist the local
community in their participation in the
ecotourism industry.
EMPOWERMENT THROUGH REGULATORY
ECONOMIC ENHANCEMENT
• Travel and tour agencies have been paying the indigenous peoples
a small sum of money after they has displayed their cultural identity.
• Giving indigenous people a say in park management.
• Contracts between indigenous people and the government, which
contain specific details about the rights, responsibilities, and
obligations of all parties, as well as a commitment to respect the
terms of the contract.
• Should be an intermediary between the government and indigenous
people: someone they could trust to act on proxy and who could
accurately represent their culture and needs, and for the
government this person could explain rules and policies to the
indigenous people.
• Ideally this person would be from the indigenous group, but would
have expertise in law and public policy.
• Zimbabwean Government’s Communal Areas Management
Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) through 1975
Parks and Wildlife Act 1975: include the local communities in the
wildlife tourism.
• Under CAMPFIRE, the Zimbabwe Department of National Parks
and Wildlife Management is statutorily authorized to give district
councils appropriate authority, which provides district councils in
communal lands with full custodial rights over local wildlife.
• Council can collect revenues from safari hunting, photographic
tourism, and the culling of game for meat, hides and tusks.
• Devolution of appropriate authority occurs on condition that the
district council develops a “wildlife management plan”—with the
participation of the local community for its
jurisdiction.
• District councils are expected to use the
profits for local development projects and
share a fixed percentage of the revenues
with the local people.
• US: Native American Business
Development, Trade Promotion and
Tourism Act 2000: requires the Secretary
of the Interior to offer assistance to
American Indian businesses, including
market analyses, financing and
promotional assistance.
• Local community and indigenous people should
be allowed to impose entrance fees to profit from
tourists in order to be able to use the profit for
the future development of tourism in the place.
(Markowitz, 2001)
• Khao Rao Cave Development project in Lao
PDR, a revenue-sharing scheme was enforced:
villagers can retain 50% of the entrance fees,
provided that they must ensure that the cave
formations are not damaged, a local guide
accompanies all groups into the cave, and the
200 metres of forest between the cave and
roadside is not degraded.
• Lao PDR: Luang Namtha province: Nam Ha Ecotourism
Project was launched in October 1999.
• tourism revenue sharing scheme, the development of
public funds for tourism management, village
development and conservation activities.
• As soft regulation builds on information, persuasion and
guidance, it is also less likely to generate acceptability
problems and as such, Malaysia may achieve the
success desired if information, persuasion and guidance
are properly channeled.
• More education and guidance must be provided for the
stakeholders involved in ecotourism in order to secure
better participation of local communities in ecotourism.
• In the absence of anti-competition laws
which allows the flow of arts and crafts
from neighbouring countries, the local
artists and artisans have difficulty to
remain marketable in the local
marketplace especially when the local
products are more expensive due to the
relatively higher cost of
living in Malaysia as
compared to the
neighbouring countries.
IMPLEMENTATION OF SOCIAL IMPACT
ASSESSMENT
• Many of the ecotourism projects are developed without
consulting the local community.
• Perak State government developed the National
Botanical Garden Project in Kampung Chang, Sungai
Gepai, Bidor without consulting the local Semai
community. Ironically, the state government claimed that
allowing tourists to roam the settlements to capture
pictures of the Orang Asli for a token sum would be a
spin-off of the project
• Tourism projects have proven to have caused the denial
of the natives’ rights of their customary land.
• Temuan: forcibly evicted in 1995 by the federal
government, the Selangor state government, the
Malaysian Highway Authority (MHA), and United
Engineers Malaysia (UEM), the engineering firm in the
project to build a highway to the new Kuala Lumpur
International Airport.
• Although the National Botanical Garden and the highway
could be perceived as public interest projects which
facilitate the ecotourism industry, however, the refusal of
the government to hear the opinions of the Semai and
Temuan communities obviously does not
portray the adoption of the utilitarian
definition of public interest.
• National Urbanisation Policy (NUP):
SIA studies must be conducted when
undertaking the planning and approval of all public and
private development activities, BUT SIA is not widely
used in development projects. (Lim, 2009)
• Absence of sanction or remedy unlike those provided in
many strict liability regulatory laws.
• SIA should be made compulsory under respective
planning laws with the participation of local community.
• Zuni government: survey in 1965 to get a feel for the
public’s enthusiasm for developing attractions like
recreation areas, motels and archaeological sites.
• The Zuni tribal members rejected the idea because they
did not feel that they were properly consulted and
advised.
• 1894: Tongariro National Park was established in New
Zealand by
agreement with the Maori people,
a place that was, and still is,
important to them for spiritual reasons.
REVIEW OF MANAGEMENT OF LOCAL AND STATE
AUTHORITIES IN ECOTOURISM SITES
• The inefficiency of the local authority also became the
obstacle in the development of ecotourism in Kampung
Rantai (Sabah)
• The ecotourism activity in Kampung Rantai had trouble
in conserving the water catchment from the surrounding
area, which was threatened by the logging industry,
Although the surrounding area of the water catchment
was finally gazetted as Virgin Forest Reserve Class I,
logging dispute continued to threaten the water
catchment at the whole Bundu Apin-Apin area.
• The legal battle has dire consequences on the
ecotourism activity in Kampung Rantai. Ecotourism
activities were virtually stopped while the legal battle
continued as time and resources were devoted to the
court proceedings.
• National Heritage Act 2005 & other
general statutes concerned in Malaysia
should also incorporate relevant provisions
to ensure the preservation of cultural
heritage of the local community.
• US 1992 National Historical Preservation
Act Amendments: tribes now have the
statutory right to be consulted by the
federal agency when a proposed
undertaking would affect a historic
property that holds religious and cultural
significance for the tribe.
• Limitations of income of states
(federalism) structure: Kedah
state government proposed to
introduce heli-logging in
Ulu Muda.
• The state and local governments should
be more active in playing its role as the
guardians of public interest of the local
communities.
CONCLUSION
• Regulators should strike a balance among diverse
interests in the development of the ecotourism industry
in Malaysia.
• The challenge therefore is to make that balancing act
transparent. Under the watchful eye of the courts, the
executives and the legislatures, public interest—the
determining standard that is elastic and versatile—
continues to provide safeguard to those charged with
protecting it or to those who are served by it.
• While supporting the fact that the courts do make laws,
the participation of public interest groups and public
participation in the proceedings of the court should be
acknowledged.