Living on the Edge: Benefit-Sharing from Protected Area Tourism

Tourism has an essential role in terms of contributing to the financial sustainability of protected areas. In addition, through effective and efficient benefit-sharing, tourism can positively impact numerous stakeholders within and beyond the protected area. Living on the Edge: Benefit-Sharing from Protected Area Tourism highlights the complexity of benefit-sharing, the importance of identifying all relevant stakeholders, the challenges of ensuring equity and sustainability, and the critical importance of good governance. The evolution of benefit-sharing mechanisms over time also emphasizes a continuing need to evolve and adapt to each unique situation as much evidence indicates that little has changed for those living on the edge. Although this book focuses on benefit-sharing from protected area tourism, it is essential to acknowledge that along with these benefits are costs associated with tourism, including possible increased local prices, loss of access to land, human–wildlife conflict, and other related costs. The contributing authors agree that benefit-sharing must include good governance, accountability, equity, transparency, a broad reach of stakeholder engagement, and a robust combination of tangible and intangible benefits – with recognition that benefit-sharing systems need to be adaptive and evolve, as needed, according to the relevant situation. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

Table of Contents:
1. Living on the edge: benefit-sharing from protected area tourism Susan Snyman and Kelly S. Bricker 2. Revenue sharing from tourism in terrestrial African protected areas Anna Spenceley, and Susan Snyman, and Andrew Rylance 3. Economic impacts of tourism in protected areas of Brazil Thiago do Val Simardi Beraldo Souza, Brijesh Thapa, Camila Gonçalves de Oliveira Rodrigues, and Denise Imori 4. Khanyayo village and Mkhambathi Nature Reserve, South Africa: a pragmatic qualitative investigation into attitudes towards a protected area Dorothy Queiros and Kevin Mearns 5. Strengthening governance processes to improve benefit-sharing from tourism in protected areas by using stakeholder analysis Jasper Heslinga, Peter Groote, and Frank Vanclay 6. African tourism industry employees: expenditure patterns and comparisons with other community members Susan Snyman 7. Tourism development and the empowerment of local communities: The case of Mitzpe Ramon, a peripheral town in the Israeli Negev Desert Joshua Schmidt and Natan Uriely 8. Community involvement and tourism revenue sharing as contributing factors to the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Jozani–Chwaka Bay National Park and Biosphere Reserve, Zanzibar Florian Carius and Hubert Job