The Impact and Benefit of Tourism on Protected Areas


The creation of parks has historically been a symbol for social impact: from the exclusivity of royal hunting estates to the first protected lands opened to commoners, parks have with time become a cultural image for a specific city, region or nation (Eagles 2002).


Nonetheless, parks management is still a highly debated topic in order to create an international framework applicable for different parks typologies with the common objective of allowing controlled touristic access to the territory but at the same time creating an economically sustainable means to finance the conservation and protection agenda while valuing the social and cultural significance of the land.

"This short- fall has highlighted the importance of ensuring effective visitor management within protected areas to maximise the environmental and economic returns that are attributable to – or obtainable from – nature-based tourism" (Whitelaw 2014).

The social representation of parks is evolving with the trends of new generations which are shifting the focus more towards a significance for environmental impact with increased sensibility on the ecosystem services of the land itself (Eagles 2002). This direction not only changes the social dimension of parks but as well creates opportunities for marketization and thus incremental revenue streams towards these new "active lifestyle" generation (Eagles 2002).

With regard to the cultural dimension of parks, the IUCN recommends to incorporate and recognise in all protected areas' systems spiritual values of protected areas and culture-based approaches to conservation (IUCN 2003). The involvement of Indigenous and other traditional people on their domains in the conservation and traditional use of the land not only leads to great collaboration with the parks authorities but as well yields to higher ecological conservation and respectful utilization of the natural resources (Beltran 2000).


However, the relationship between protected areas and tourism, thus external visitors, remains a complicated one: "the distinct economic focus of tourism and the contrasting conservation focus of protected areas" (Whitelaw 2014). The goal is to create adaptable revenue generation models which allows tourism and recreational activities to become the main source of funding for protected areas without negatively affecting the conservation and mitigation measures taken by the parks officials (Whitelaw 2014).

Example of this could be the environmental mortgages, environment services or polluter pays approach as well as analytical tools such as the money generation or tourist impact models (Whitelaw 2014). 


Overall, "the change from protectionism strategy to development strategy through innovative entrepreneurial activities that can reduce the negative impacts from activities by means of sustainable innovations" (Lordkipanidze 2011).



References:


Eagles, P.F.J. and S.F. McCool. (2002). ‘Tourism in national parks and protected areas: planning and management’. (New York: CABI, 2002) Chapter 2: Park tourism in the world, pp.27–50.


Lordkipanidze, M. & Krozer, Yoram & Kadiman, T. & Crul, Marcel & Brezet, Han. (2011), Impacts from tourism in protected areas


Whitelaw, P.A., B.E.M. King and D. Tolkach, (2014), Protected areas, conservation and tourism – financing the sustainable dream, Journal of Sustainable Tourism 22(4) pp.584–603. 


IUCN Commission Group, (2003), Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas, WPC Recommendation 13, Durban, World Parks Congress 2003


Beltran, Javier, (2000), Indigenous and traditional peoples and protected areas, IUCN

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