Collaborative Environmental Project in Indonesia

ENVIRONMENTAL INTELLIGENCE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Assessing Ecotourism’s Abilities to Generate Community Benefits Bunaken National Park, Indonesia

 by: Vicki J. Lee

(e-mail address:                            )

 Thesis for Master of Environmental Studies University of Waterloo, 2000

Protected areas today are being called upon to integrate residents living within and around their boundaries with the park’s conservation goals.  In return for imposed regulations on resource use, many park managers are turning towards ecotourism as a tool for generating benefits for local residents.  This thesis assesses ecotourism’s abilities to generate benefits for the local residents of a marine national park.   Four communities located within the archipelago of Bunaken National Park in North Sulawesi, Indonesia were chosen as study sites for this research.  Park residents, tourists, tourism business, and outside agencies were all consulted to gain insight into the various perspectives of tourism impacts within the archipelago.  Mixed quantitative and qualitative methods (questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, respectively) were employed to gather the necessary data, with some more participatory techniques used to further examine specific issues.  The vast majority of earnings from tourism to the park were found to accrue outside park boundaries.  Of those earned within the park, a large percentage was lost through leakage.  However, given the small economic base within the Bunaken archipelago, the few benefits accrued to local communities were found to be significant.  Socio-cultural impacts were deemed minimal by residents, although concerns were expressed regarding the potential for negative impacts as tourism grows in the area.  Interestingly, while many opportunities exist to increase benefits accrued to local residents, most residents were not interested in becoming more involved in the industry.  As a consequence, further developments of tourism will likely not increase local employment in the industry.   Among the resulting recommendations, the implementation of an entrance fee or tax for the park was suggested as one means of increasing budgets for community development projects.  Emphasizing the protected status of the park and implementing educational programs (for both locals and visitors) regarding the natural ecosystems were also suggested.

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