A new mission for protected areas? Tourists glide along Botswana’s Okavango Delta,
led by local guides. |
Foreign
companies keep the lion’s share of ecotourism profits but the Makuleke of South Africa
are trailblazing a juicy commercial venture based on their firm control of ancestral
land and resources
Winning back land rights
is one side of the battle waged by indigenous people, finding ways to live off the
earth is another. Is ecotourism the answer?
Not always says a study conducted for the Ford Foundation by Mafisa Research and
Planning, a South African agency specialized in ecotourism. It examined the economics
of about 30 game lodges in national parks and game reserves across southern Africa,
which is fast becoming a prime tourist desti-
nation.
Bottom
of the ladder jobs
Until
recently, the upscale lodges dotting the wilderness were excluded from the state-owned
national parks, where hunting is also prohibited. This is beginning to change as
ongoing land reforms, which began in the mid-1990s, give indigenous people often
chased from their lands during apartheid, the right to use them for sustainable commercial
activities, particularly in the field of ecotourism.
On the books, ecotourism rings like a sensible way out of poverty and underdevelopment.
The U.S. based International Ecotourism Society defines it as “responsible travel
to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local
people.”
Yet few studies have actually examined its impact on local people’s livelihoods,
making the Ford study something of a landmark. Its conclusion: local residents in
southern Africa generally get a raw deal, amounting to little more than a few poorly
paid and unskilled jobs. Most of the money spent goes to foreign-owned airlines,
hotels, travel agencies and transportation companies, along with consumer goods produced
abroad to satisfy tourists’ tastes. Indeed, the World Bank estimates that 55 percent
of tourist spending in developing countries eventually leaks back to the North, while
some organizations put the rate at 90 percent, especially in southern Africa.
There are, however, a few countervailing examples in the region. In the far north
of South Africa’s famed Kruger National Park, about 900 families belonging to the
Makuleke tribe have won back the rights to own and use about 25,000 hectares of one
of the park’s most spectacular landscapes which, according to some experts, contains
up to two-thirds of its biodiversity. They are now dealing with a commercial operator,
Matswani Safaris, to develop a luxury 24-bed lodge, along with a tent-camp and even
a museum. Instead of resettling on the land, they have decided to use it as an economic
base for their villages on the park’s frontier.
In addition to lodging, the Makuleke have also decided to offer some trophy hunting,
arranged by a private safari company. Last year, two elephants and two buffaloes
were hunted, which brought about $57,000 for local development projects (and meat
which was distributed among Makuleke villages). The yields are supposed to increase
this year (including animals like nyala and zebra), which adds fuel to a simmering
controversy about trophy hunting in general. However, the Makuleke leaders vow to
phase out the hunt once the other tourism projects turn a decent profit.
Negotiating
power
When
running at 60 percent capacity, the lodge will pay rent of $75,000 a year to the
Makuleke people, in addition to about $150,000 in yearly wages to local employees.
In total, the programme should inject some $35,000 a year into the coffers of the
Makuleke—roughly $400 per family, in a region where four out of every ten adults
is unemployed and the average annual wage is about $750.
Projects like this offer food for thought on the eve of the United Nations Year of
Ecotourism, slated for 2002. One of the keys lies in equal terms: where local residents
have strong rights over their wildlife and other natural resources, they can negotiate
with private operators to ensure that their interests—financial, cultural and environmental—are
protected. |
