2005 Forest Task Force workshop
Workshop on Developing Economic Benefits of Protected Areas & Ecotourism
13-15 October 2005, Bulgaria
In October 2005, BirdLife’s European Forest Task Force held its fourth annual meeting, focused on development of sustainable ecotourism and its potential for aiding forest conservation, in the foothills of the Central Balkan National Park in Bulgaria. Certified by PAN Parks, Central Balkan is one of Europe’s cornerstones of developing wilderness network guaranteeing high level of protection and sustainability of tourism. The Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds/BirdLife Bulgaria and Central Balkan National Park hosted the seminar co-funded by BirdLife International, Finnish Ministry of the Environment and UNDP Bulgaria. The FTF would like to express its gratitude to all of the above as well as to all speakers and their organizations.
The rural income generation and increased employment are the basic social and economic goals when one is focusing on sustainable forest management. Ensuring local benefits from tourism is vital to anything that can be called sustainable. These goals are also pursued by the EU in order to achieve the objective for improving quality of life in rural areas. Among the outstanding opportunities to diversify the local economies is the ecotourism.
The Tourism industry is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world. The statistics show that about half of the international tourists nowadays are looking to break the monotony of their holidays through experiencing new horizons such as being in the wilderness. Holidaymakers are becoming more environmentally aware people, eager to visit places of conservation value. At the same time Europe remains the largest tourist market in the world. With the Europeans mostly preferring to travel close to their homes and the increasing demand for conservation related holidays it could be expected that the tourist growth on the Old Continent would result into more frequent and also more conscious visits to Nature and National parks.
ECOTOURISM WOULD BE SUSTAINABLE ONLY IF PART OF THE GENERATED INCOMES GO BACK FOR NATURE CONSERVATION PURPOSES
Tourists expect to get high quality products for their money. Moreover, they would appreciate to know that part of their money contribute to nature conservation. However, besides contributing to nature conservation tourism developments could also destroy the base of its own existence. One of the major concerns expressed by the workshop participants was the easiness the ecotourism could become devastating for the nature. Habitat degradation, soil erosion and pollution, species decline are very likely to take place unless good management and control are applied. Excessive visitor number as one of the effects of mass tourism causes problems particularly in areas hosting vulnerable to disturbance species and habitats, to mention as an example high mountains made accessible by ski-lifts. The mass attractions and ecotourism profits going back to large external companies put on a shaky ground the sustainability. To prevent this from happening it is of key importance to have in place environmental education, ecological awareness raising and not the least good management planning. For the sake of preventing negative impact of tourism development and ensuring the success of tourist enterprises, the protected areas management plans should include appropriate business planning with scientific and socio-economic aspects. The plan ought to envisage the benefits for the local people from the very beginning – income raising, employment opportunities, improved infrastructure, and for nature conservation - lobbying, awareness rising, and sufficient management capacity. Creation even of small number of jobs can be significant for remote rural areas. Experience in the U.K. shows that well-designed reserves can accomodate large visitor numbers with good yields for both people and wildlife.
“The source and nature of financing depends entirely on the type of the attraction we want to finance…” stated Paul Morling – an economics expert and a key speaker at the seminar. If the ecotourism is an appropriate opportunity to be developed resources could be sought from direct government provisions to private grants and foundations. At the same time ecotourism in itself is a funding generation source for conservation.
Existence of collaboration and good cooperation was highlighted to be beneficial not only to tourism development but also for biological studies, environmental education and raising awareness about nature.
The FTF open workshop was attended by more than 60 people from 14 European countries. Regardless of countries’ environmental and cultural specifics it was inferred that provided high nature values are present the environmentally–friendly tourism can be a feasible and worthwhile alternative of forest exploitation anywhere.
Presentations
- Birdwatching tourism in Finland (PDF, 3 MB)
- Ecotourism markets (PDF, 886 KB)
- Financing & Ecotourism (PDF, 1 MB)
- PAN Parks corporate handout (PDF, 81 KB)
- The Nature of Ecotourism (PDF, 2 MB)
- Transboundary Cooperation, Oulanka-Paanajarvi NP, Finland, Pt. 1 (Powerpoint, 3 MB)
- Transboundary Cooperation, Oulanka-Paanajarvi NP, Finland, Pt. 2 (Powerpoint, 4 MB)