دانلود مقاله ISI انگلیسی شماره 21475
ترجمه فارسی عنوان مقاله

چه کسی در حقوق و دستمزد گوریل است؟ ادعا درآمد گردشگری از پارک ملی اوگاندا

عنوان انگلیسی
Who is on the Gorilla’s Payroll? Claims on Tourist Revenue From a Ugandan National Park
کد مقاله سال انتشار تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی
21475 2003 14 صفحه PDF
منبع

Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)

Journal : World Development, Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2003, Pages 177–190

ترجمه کلمات کلیدی
- آفریقا - اوگاندا - پارک های ملی - حفاظت از جامعه - حفاظت و توسعه -
کلمات کلیدی انگلیسی
Africa,Uganda,national parks,community conservation,conservation and development,
پیش نمایش مقاله
پیش نمایش مقاله  چه کسی در حقوق و دستمزد گوریل است؟ ادعا درآمد گردشگری از پارک ملی اوگاندا

چکیده انگلیسی

This paper discusses the competing interests in revenues derived from visitor wildlife tourism based on viewing the mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei) in Mgahinga National Park, Uganda. Financial flows to local communities do reduce their sense of grievance at the park’s creation, but do not compensate them for the costs of park creation. Different interests within and outside Uganda compete for wildlife tourism revenue and limit its capacity to fund the direct and indirect costs of gorilla conservation. The creation of multiscale multistakeholder partnerships for conservation built on revenue-sharing is a daunting institutional challenge.

مقدمه انگلیسی

A central element in the “new conservation” thinking of the 1990s (Hulme and Murphree, 1999 and Hulme and Murphree, 2001) is the linkage between conservation and human needs. The limitations of conventional protectionist approaches to biodiversity conservation (often referred to as “fences and fines” or “fortress conservation”) have been recognized (e.g., Inamdar, de Jode, Lindsay, & Cobb, 1999). These limitations relate to economic factors (e.g., Emerton, 2001; Leader-Williams & Albon, 1988; Norton-Griffiths & Southey, 1995), and concerns about political opposition, human rights or justice (Neumann, 1997). It is widely argued within the wildlife conservation policy community that wildlife needs to “pay its way” (Eltringham, 1994). This principle is currently taken to be true generally, but particularly in poorer and less industrialized countries (Emerton, 2001; Wilkie & Carpenter, 1999a). The revenue stream that wildlife is now being expected to yield serves several distinct purposes. The first, and the most central to the “community” ethic that dominates much international thinking about conservation, and practice in developing countries, is that revenues from wildlife should contribute to poverty reduction in communities adjacent to protected areas or wildlife populations, to meeting the needs of rural people, and to compensating for benefits foregone due to conservation policy (e.g., establishment of an exclusive protected area) and the costs of living next to a protected area (e.g., crop-raiding wild animals, Naughton-Treves, 1997; Sekhar, 1998). Community-based natural resource management schemes such as CAMPFIRE in Zimbabwe (e.g., Hasler, 1996; Metcalfe, 1995; Murombedzi, 1999), and schemes involving people living adjacent to protected areas, from which they have been evicted, or which prevent colonization (e.g., Hulme & Infield, 2001; Infield & Namara, 2001; Wells, Brandon, & Hannah, 1992; Western & Wright, 1994) represent opposite ends of a continuum of “community conservation” activity that emphasises the need for wildlife-based revenue generation (Barrow & Murphree, 2001). The second reason why conservation policy-makers wish wildlife to “pay its way” is to offset the costs of state-funded conservation. Protected areas typically generate low economic returns compared to alternative land uses (Norton-Griffiths & Southey, 1995; Norton-Griffiths, 1995). Conservation can therefore involve considerable economic costs to governments both in terms of revenues foregone as well as the direct costs of their management. Demonstrable economic gains from wildlife conservation at national level can be important factors in the enthusiasm for governments to pursue conservation strategies (Emerton, 2001). Protected areas are costly to establish, police and maintain: the costs of protected area systems globally are large, even if not impossibly large (James, Gaston, & Balmford, 1999). In developing countries, heavy government expenditure on conservation can be politically and economically problematic, given the competing demands for investment, many of them with potentially direct effects in reducing poverty and human suffering. Expenditure on conservation is also criticized by conservative economists (particularly the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) convinced of the need to reduce economically unproductive state expenditure. Most less industrialized countries do not spend enough per hectare of protected area to ensure that biodiversity conservation is effective (James et al., 1999; Leader-Williams & Albon, 1988), so even where the burden of state expenditure is high, it may be less than is needed. Wilkie and Carpenter (1999a), for example, suggest that the total of government and donor investment in central Africa meets only 30% of the recurrent costs of the protected area network. Under these circumstances the possibility of deriving revenues from wildlife has obvious attractions. Unless protected areas and wild species are able to yield streams of revenue, conservation efforts are likely to be ineffective through underfunding, governments may give preference to other forms of land use (e.g., mining or agriculture), and the financial incentives for illegal use may drive degradation of the wildlife resources in poorly-protected “paper parks” (Brown, 1998; Wilkie & Carpenter, 1999a). Wildlife can yield revenue streams through consumptive use (harvesting for consumption or sale, or sport hunting), or nonconsumptive use (various forms of wildlife or nature viewing tourism, including “ecotourism”). Successful and sustained revenue generation from wildlife based tourism requires a relatively high level of physical infrastructure including access to international airports, suitable hotels and lodges (luxuriously rugged for hunters, safely luxurious for wildlife viewers), a good road network and vehicle fleet, a good record on security, law and order, and above all the presence of suitable wildlife species for visitors to watch or kill. Revenues from wildlife viewing or hunting are greatest where there is rare and attractive wildlife available to be seen (or shot) with appropriate facilities to ensure a quality holiday experience. Safari hunting follows a fairly straightforward formula, with certain large mammals (in Africa notably elephant, buffalo and lion) forming the bedrock of the industry. For wildlife viewing, while the importance of bird-spotting holidays is growing, as is interest in traditional peoples and their culture, it is the presence of large, identifiable charismatic species that is most important. Wildlife-based revenue is thus commonly dependent on a small fraction of total biodiversity, that represented by a few large species of mammal. The current policy assumption is that tourism, particularly so-called “ecotourism” has significant potential to support wildlife conservation (Honey, 1999; Walpole & Goodwin, 2001). There are both benefits and costs to nature tourism, but its potential to contribute to both conservation and development goals together is a major attraction (Sherman & Dixon, 1991). It is widely celebrated as a contribution to conservation options in the Third World on the basis of local success and informal review, often over short timeframes (e.g., Langoya & Long, 1998). But appraisals of the economics of community benefits and costs from wildlife, suggest more caution (Emerton, 2001), Recent studies in the Democratic Republic of Congo suggest that safari hunting has a greater potential than wildlife viewing to support the costs of conservation but even so can only manage to offset some of the costs of protected areas (Wilkie and Carpenter, 1999a and Wilkie and Carpenter, 1999b). Brown (1998) suggests the need for greater realism as to the potential of tourism in areas such as West and Central Africa, where tourist infrastructure is poor, tourism is limited, and political instability is a significant problem. A number of studies have explored the potential for revenue generation through consumptive and nonconsumptive uses of wild species, and have discussed how that revenue should be allocated to maximize either community benefits or community compliance with conservation goals (or both). Whatever the size of revenue streams from wildlife, there are questions of allocation between different interests. Most obviously, these include the desire to use such revenues to compensate and support the livelihood and development needs of local communities, and the desire to use them to meet the costs of conservation science, planning, administration and management at the national scale. Where revenue streams are insufficient to meet all the costs of conservation, these allocation choices can be problematic. Archabald and Naughton-Treves (2001) discuss the development of a revenue-sharing program in three forest national parks in Western Uganda. This paper discusses the different claims on revenue from one of these, Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (MGNP), where local and national interests in the wildlife-based income generated through tourism based on viewing the mountain gorilla. Gorillas are extraordinarily charismatic animals in the eyes of foreign tourists, and in the 1990s Uganda’s relative stability economically and politically (particularly in comparison to its neighbors, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo), meant that it was well-positioned to benefit from wildlife tourism (Archabald & Naughton-Treves, 2001; Butynski & Kalina, 1998; Hamilton, Cunningham, Byarugaba, & Kayanja, 2000). This paper is based primarily on fieldwork carried out in 1998 around Mgahinga Gorilla National Park. Eight PRA-format community meetings were held in parishes surrounding the national park, and a program of semi-structured interviews was undertaken with selected informants from these parishes (including Parish Chairmen), with District Government officials, with national park wardens and guards, with development and conservation organizations working in the area, and with Uganda Wildlife Authority staff. The paper also draws on the second author’s work through the 1990s with an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) engaged with the Uganda Wildlife Authority in community conservation initiatives.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

A diversity of interested parties has struggled to increase their share of gorilla tourism revenue from Mgahinga. Recognition that “communities” should not be understood as organic unified wholes has led to an emphasis on the divergent interests of multiple actors within them (Agrawal & Gibson, 1999). But, the competition for funds generated by Ugandan gorilla tourism reflects the fact that the politics of resource access and control extend well beyond the local level. It is possible to identify a wide range of interests in gorilla tourism revenue and related investment at Mgahinga, with claims being advanced on a number of different criteria at local, national and international levels (Table 4). At the local level, the simple definition of “community” in terms of current proximity would suggest that it includes people resident within parishes next to the park. This “park neighbor” principle is the commonest approach to community conservation in Africa: as McKean (1996) points out, vesting property rights in a resource’s nearest neighbors strengthens their incentives to enforce rules about access. Against proximity must be weighed historical rights, however and the different claims of those people of their descendants actually evicted from the park, or the wider community whence they came and to which they returned, or the claims of the forest’s original inhabitants, the Batwa, dispossessed long before the park was created (Table 4). Local and regional claims can also be made on other grounds. One possibility is need (with revenues focused on the most asset-poor, even if the are not those actually evicted). Another is that tourist revenues should serve development needs more broadly, either in the broader area of the park or across Kisoro District: why should the people of Mgahinga benefit from the large gorilla-related revenues when many other equally poor communities nearby. At the national scale, claims on gorilla tourism revenue might be advanced on behalf of UWA and other conservation organizations to support their mandate for conservation across the country. Not every national park has an equivalent of the gorillas that can generate substantial income to offset costs and meet the needs and aspirations of local communities. UWA itself clearly feels a need to crosssubsidize parks that cannot generate revenue, and subsidize loss-making activities (Table 4). Nationally too, the Government of Uganda might legitimately see gorilla tourism revenue as a resource to be used for the citizens of Uganda as a whole, whether offsetting the costs of conservation as a claim on the national exchequer, of directly as a source of income for welfare or development purposes (Table 4). Internationally, there are also diverse interests in gorilla tourism revenue, including the conservation authorities, citizens and governments of Rwanda and DRC (where the gorilla groups were originally habituated). International conservation organizations have a powerful interest in the management of the gorillas and the revenue derived from them, among other things, drawing donations internationally that are spent on gorilla conservation (Table 4). There are therefore many groups who could legitimately share in the potentially large revenues to be derived from gorilla tracking. Each possibility raises significant questions about fairness, justice, and need (Table 4). Logically, if wildlife is paying its way, local people should be better off with the park than without it. This is clearly not the case at Mgahinga (although a proper economic analysis of costs and benefits remains to be done). But, given the costs associated with the creation of the park on local communities, even the entire revenues from gorilla tracking would not compensate them fully. Anyway, it is unlikely that other interested parties would agree to such a distribution of the revenues. Most would argue that such a distribution was neither fair nor feasible. The conservation program at Mgahinga, and more generally the revenue-sharing program within the Uganda Wildlife Authority as a whole, have not yet begun to address these kinds of issues, or imagine the political institutions necessary to do so. The literature suggests that effective institutions must emerge from local communities and secure an equitable, transparent and reasonable engagement between local people and state (Agrawal & Gibson, 1999). They also have to embrace a whole range of political actors at local and regional scale within both government and the private sector. The challenge of building such a multiscale multisector partnership is considerable. Neither policy-makers in Uganda nor international conservation organizations that promote the philosophy that wildlife should pay its way have yet faced up to the political economic complexity of their “participatory” objectives. If institutions cannot be devised such that the mountain gorilla in Uganda can pay its way to the satisfaction of all parties, then the argument that conservation more widely can be based on this approach, let alone that it provides a “win–win” solution of “development-with-conservation” must be weak. This is especially true for the many species without the global interest that gorillas attract, and for countries or environments less suitable for tourism than Uganda’s Mgahinga volcanoes.