Editor: David Fennell (Brock University)
Reviews Editor David Weaver (University of South California, USA)
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Volume: 2 Number: 1 Page: 33–53
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Local Participation in the Planning and Management of Ecotourism: A Revised Model Approach
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Brian Garrod
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Ecotourism is increasingly being advanced as a strategy to help address economic and social problems in local communities, and as an appropriate and effective tool of environmental conservation. The full
and effective participation of local communities in the planning and management of ecotourism is, however, rarely a feature of ecotourism projects. At best, ecotourism projects tend to aim for the 'involvement'
of local people, and at worst, ecotourism projects can ignore the issue of local participation completely. Such projects frequently fail after a relatively short period of time. This paper sets out to identify
a number of elements of good practice in incorporating the fundamental principles of local community participation into the processes by which ecotourism projects are planned and managed. Taking lessons
from this good practice, and drawing on a model previously developed in the early 1990s by Susan Drake, a revised model approach for local participation in the planning and management of ecotourism is then
introduced and discussed. While this revised model approach was originally developed in the context of marine ecotourism in the EU Atlantic Area, it is arguably more generally applicable to different types
of ecotourism projects and across a wider spectrum of geographical locations.
© Multilingual Matters 2003
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