Rainforest Tourism, Conservation and Management

Challenges for Sustainable Development

Bruce Prideaux, Bruce Prideaux

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136201080
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecosystems & Habitats
• Index: Biological Sciences

Globally rainforests are under threat on numerous fronts, including clearing for agriculture, harvesting for timber and urban expansion. Yet they have a crucial role in biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and providing other ecosystem services. As the term is used in this book, rainforests include both temperate and tropical, although the emphasis is on tropical rainforests. Rainforests are also attractive tourist spaces and where they have been used as a tourism resource have generated significant income for local communities. However not all use of rainforests as a tourism resource has been sustainable. This book argues that sustainability must be the foundation on which tourism use of this complex but ultimately fragile ecosystem must be built upon. It provides a multi-disciplinary perspective, incorporating rainforest science, management and tourism issues. The book is organized into four sections commencing with Rainforest Ecology and Management followed by People and Rainforests, Opportunities for Rainforest Tourism Development and finally Threats to Rainforests. Each major rainforest region is covered, including the Amazon, Central America, Africa, Australia and south-east Asia, in the context of a specific issue. For example rainforests in Papua New Guinea are examined in the context of community-based ecotourism development, while the rainforests in Borneo are discussed in an examination of wildlife issues. Other issues covered in this manner include governance, empowerment issues for rainforest peoples and climate change.

Part I

Tourism in rainforest regions

1 Factors governing the development of tourism in rainforest regions

Bruce Prideaux

Introduction

Surprisingly, issues related to the systematic development of tourism activity in rainforest areas have been largely ignored in the tourism literature, although it is true that there are a growing number of papers that examine a range of tourism-related issues where the setting happens to be a forest. In one sense, this book builds on Font and Tribe’s (2000) book that examined issues related to forest tourism, recreation and environmental management but directs the reader’s attention to a wider range of issues associated with rainforests. Essentially this book is an attempt to redress, in a small way, the many gaps in knowledge that currently surround tourism in these wonderful, but in many areas, threatened, ecosystems. To undertake this task, a large team of authors has been assembled to examine rainforest issues using a thematic approach. Many of the authors are from the countries they have examined, giving the book a unique quality. This chapter introduces the need for a systematic study of factors related to understanding opportunities for tourism development in rainforests, builds a model to assist this process and applies this model to a case study based on the Wet Tropics Queensland World Heritage Area (WTQWHA), Australia.

Rainforests offer considerable opportunities for the development of tourist experiences, including traditional non-consumptive forest recreation activities such as camping and hiking, consumptive activities such as fishing and foraging, and new forms of tourism activity including adventure activities, accommodation, white water rafting, mountain biking, interpretative centres and so on. From a resources perspective, tourism is able to provide a low-impact alternative to other more destructive uses of forest resources, such as logging, mining and conversion to agricultural land. Tourism also offers opportunities for local communities, including traditional owners, to establish businesses that can generate employment, create investment opportunities for local entrepreneurs and provide additional recreational facilities. However, as Pearce (2008) observed, there is at times a schizophrenic public view on rainforest tourism and the role it may play in conservation. From a positive perspective, it has a role as an ‘environmental saviour’ based on the economic benefits that rainforest tourism can generate. The negative perspective emerges from fears about adverse biophysical impacts on rainforest ecosystems and on indigenous cultures.

Given the fragility of many rainforest systems (see Chapter 2 of this book for detailed discussion), it is essential that a high level of care is exercised to ensure that tourism activities are undertaken in a manner that ensures long-term ecological sustainability and, where present, respects indigenous cultures. Business sustainability is also important and closely related to the quality of the rainforest environment. Surprisingly, the literature has largely ignored tourism activity in rainforest areas and where it has been examined it has usually been in the context of demand-side research or through the perspectives of associated relationships, such as conservation, preservation of biodiversity, community-based development, ecotourism, interpretation, backpacking, etc.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a theoretical context for the examination of rainforest tourism commencing with a model that seeks to tie together the most significant issues that influence the opportunities for, and ongoing operation of, tourism activities in rainforest areas. This discussion is followed by a case (the Wet Tropics Queensland World Heritage Area [WTQWHA]) which illustrates how the model may be used as a tool for understanding many of the issues that affect tourism activity in rainforest areas. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the remaining chapters in this book.

Extent of rainforests

The following section briefly discusses the geographic extent of rainforests and some of the issues they face. A more detailed discussion of rainforest ecology, including key terms and concepts, can be found in Chapter 2.

Two main types of rainforest are recognised: tropical rainforests and temperate rainforests. Some authorities further divide rainforests into tropical and sub-tropical. While this book examines common issues affecting both types, its primary focus lies with tropical rainforests. From a geographic perspective, tropical rainforests generally occur between latitudes of 28 degrees south and north of the equator in the equatorial zone between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer. Tropical rainforests cover approximately 7 per cent of the Earth’s landmass (Osborne, 2012) and, according to some authorities (Whitmore, 1998), contain up to half or even more of all species of flora and fauna. The largest block of rainforest (neotropical) is found in South and Central America. The Amazon basin, which continues to decline in size due to deforestation, extends over nine nations, but to date has been largely ignored by the tourism industry (see Chapters 10 and 11 of this book). Tropical Asia contains the world’s second largest area of rainforest but, like rainforests in other areas of the world, is under threat from sustained clearing and fragmentation. Extensive illegal clearing in parts of Sumatra and Borneo, often for agriculture or palm oil production, as well as large-scale clearing in recent years in Myanmar and Cambodia have added significantly to the reduction in size and integrity of many of Asia’s rainforests. The Congo basin, the world’s third largest basin, contains about 2 million km² of rainforests spread over six nations. As with the Amazon basin and tropical Asia, deforestation is continuing and the once continuous belt of forest is becoming increasingly fragmented as clearing continues. Australia’s tropical rainforests are much smaller in size (37,000 square kilometres), although they have significant biodiversity, with parts of the Daintree rainforest containing tree species that flourished over 60 million years ago when the Australian continent was part of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana (see www.wettropics.gov.au/gondwana, accessed 10 February 2014).

The total area of temperate rainforests is significantly smaller than tropical rainforests (see Figure 1.1). Located in the temperate zone, temperate rainforests experience high rainfall and may be either broadleaf or coniferous. Summers are generally cool. Temperate rainforests are found on the west coast of North America between California and Alaska, southern Chile and Argentina (see Chapter 9 of this book), parts of the west coast of Europe, southeastern Australia (see Chapter 7 of this book) and the west coast of Tasmania, in a number of relatively small pockets along the Atlantic coast of Europe from Norway to Spain, South Africa (Knysna-Amatole coastal forests), the Black Sea (with small pockets in Turkey and Georgia), the Caspian Sea (parts of Iran and Azerbaijan) and in Asia along the eastern Pacific coast of Taiwan and in Japan (Taiheiyo forests). Small pockets are also found in the Russian Far East (Ussuri, Manchuria and Sakhalin), as well as Montana in the USA. Some of the world’s tallest and most long-lived tree species are found in temperate forests, including California’s redwoods and sequoias.

Figure 1.1 Global distribution of temperate rainforests

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Globally many of the remaining areas of tropical and temperate rainforests are under threat from logging, farming, plantations (notably for palm oil), construction of dams, road construction, urbanisation, mining and other industrial uses. In the longer term, climate change will pose a major threat (see Chapters 4 and 5 of this book), as will the spread of disease, loss of biodiversity and increasing demand by human populations for forest resources or resources found in forests (Osborne, 2012).

In many areas, continued sanctioning of widespread rainforest clearing (in Madagascar, Guinea, Indonesia and Cambodia, for example) for agricultural uses is based on the belief that in their natural state rainforests have little value. The contribution of rainforests to ecosystem services (Gössling, 1999; Godoy et al., 2000), which includes conservation of biodiversity, maintenance of soil fertility, carbon sequestration, supply of oxygen and supply of water for human consumption, is often ignored because the benefits are global in nature and do not produce a tangible income stream at a national level. However, a growing body of research is beginning to refute this view. As Nahuelhual et al. (2007) note, Chile’s temperate rainforests are generally undervalued because the benefits of non-market ecosystem services are ignored. From a different perspective, Godoy et al. (2000) note that, while on a global scale rainforests have high potential value for carbon sequestration, ecological services and storing biological diversity, they often have low value in terms of the value of consumption or cash income to local rainforest communities. (see Gössling, 1999, for a discussion on the costs and benefits of ecosystem services derived from rainforests).

From a global perspective, two major trends are apparent. First, there is ongoing large-scale deforestation (Rudel et al., 2009); and concurrently there is an increase in the area of rainforests being placed under some form of protection. Unfortunately, the placing of rainforests under some form of protection does not always result in a cessation of illegal logging and deforestation because of poor enforcement and corruption in a number of countries.

As this book will demonstrate, rainforests have considerable scope to be developed as a tourism resource, provided that such development is sustainable and able to deliver a competitive experience that tourists are prepared to purchase. Typical opportunities for developing unique rainforest experiences include rainforest cultures, viewing flora and fauna, recreation, scenic landscapes, photography, animal viewing, outdoor recreation and adventure tourism. Development may be by commercial interests, landowners or the public sector, either on a no-cost basis or for the payment of a fee. The extent of the opportunities that exist for tourism development in general are illustrated by UNWTO forecasts of a doubling of international tourist flows between 2010 and 2030 from 940 million to 1.8 billion (Unwto, 2011). Rapid global growth of this nature offers considerable scope for the expansion of tourism experiences in rainforest areas. Domestic tourism also offers scope for the further development of rainforest experiences. Both Australia’s Wet Tropic Queensland World Heritage Area (WTQWHA) and New Zealand’s temperate rainforests demonstrate how domestic as well as international tourism can generate considerable economic value to the community in a manner that is environmentally sustainable.

The increase in the number and scale of protected rainforests has also assisted in opening these areas for tourism use. However, protecting a particular forest by classifying it as a National Park, World Heritage area or similar, or where private or traditional owners make a decision to open parts of their forest for tourism use, is only the first st...