COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN ECOTOURISM: SUGGESTIONS FOR

IMPROVEMENT THROUGH REGULATORY AND MANAGEMENT

REFORM

By,Nuraisyah Chua Abdullah

Faculty of LawUniversiti Teknologi MARA

INTRODUCTION

• Previously, the Federal government had adopted a self-effacing 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 ECOTOURISM-RELATED

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.