Browsing by Author "Vento, Eero"

Tourism is one of the main contributors in the fight against poverty, as it has become one of the strongest drivers of trade and prosperity in the global south. Protected area tourism is an especially quickly growing segment of the industry, having an important role in regional development on many rural areas of global south. However, territories labelled as protected areas represent a great variety of spaces. This research aims at unifying the holistic picture of protected area tourism governance by analysing, how protected areas with divergent landownership arrangements, management objectives and associated regulations influence tourism development and its local socio-economic impacts at the grass roots. This comparative case-study survey scrutinizes local-level tourism governance and territorial regulations on three neighbouring protected areas in Taita Taveta County, Kenya. The Tsavo National Parks are state-owned conservancies focusing on conserving biodiversity. LUMO community wildlife sanctuary is a nature tourism project owned and orchestrated by a local community, which aims to advance local socio-economic development via tourism while preserving the environment at the same time. The third area, Sarova, is a private-owned conservancy harnessed solely for nature tourism and profit-making. The areas are liable to same legislative framework and international phenomena have similar influence on them, which makes comparison on their divergent management objectives and local-level regulations expedient. By giving voice to local-level tourism stakeholders, it is possible to point out how the category (i.e. public, private or community) of the land owner and the areas’ respective management objectives influence tourism operations and impact the socio-economic outcomes from both conservation and tourism. The comparative analyses focus first on spatial socially constructed preconditions for tourism development and second, on its developmental outcomes that will primarily be analysed by reflecting the livelihood changes generated by protected area tourism and protection regulations in place. The data-set was gathered during field research in February–March 2016, and it is mainly based on semi-structured interviews with tourism employees, employers and regional experts. The principal method of interviewing is supplemented by observation and statistics, and the data is analysed by thematic and qualitative content analyses. The protected areas’ management objectives and associated regulations have drastic impacts on tourism development within their respective borders. The local administrations of the protected areas were identified as the primary institutions to explain the stark spatial differences in the case-study areas tourist numbers. Instead of the mere ”type” of the landowner, the areas’ respective management objectives and associated regulations determined whether protected area tourism generated livelihoods or other positive socio-economic outcomes. Altogether, similar preconditions for tourism development and similar socio-economic outcomes cannot be expected from all territories labelled as protected areas.