No abstract

Despite the importance of protected areas (PAs) worldwide to protect biodiversity, reduce poverty and promote sustainable development, throughout the world governments struggle to adequately fund PAs to meet conservation goals. Tourism is seen as a viable financial option for PAs, with tourism concessions through private sector partnerships gaining momentum that allows the overarching goal of preservation and conservation to remain with the state. However, without appropriate planning or best practices in place, tourism concessions can lead to such problems as waste, habitat destruction and the displacement of local people and wildlife. We analyzed tourism concession agreements in government documents from 22 countries to provide an overview of what best practices for tourism concessions are being established and what practices might need to be better incorporated into agreements. The greatest weaknesses of best practices appear to be with concession qualifications, legal, and financial responsibilities, while the strengths included environmental and empowerment/social responsibilities. This initial assessment of contract components will provide a baseline to further develop best practices and assist protected area managers, local communities, and conservation practitioners working with tourism in PAs to ensure that tourism has a positive impact on protected area management.

Ecotourism promotes responsible travel to natural areas, environmental conservation and the well-being of local communities. Eco-lodges are an important component of ecotourism ventures but an infrequently researched component of this fi eld. Considering their infl uence on the natural environment (design and operation) and local communities (employment practices and purchases), the success of ecotourism depends, in part, on the performance of eco-lodges. This project studies the effects of the Punta Islita (PI) eco-lodge on the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. An interdisciplinary nested-scale analysis, combining guest and household interviews with multi-temporal remote sensing analysis of forest cover change of the lodge and surrounding areas, is used to evaluate the environmental, economic and social impacts of ecotourism in the region. Our results show signifi cant positive contributions of the PI eco-lodge on forest cover, environmental conservation, and local economic incomes within the surrounding communities. For local livelihoods, the PI eco-lodge was seen as having positive social, cultural and economic impacts for nearly all societal variables for both employees and their neighbours. The PI eco-lodge was also perceived as reducing alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution, where conventional tourism on the Peninsula was shown to increase these 'societal ills'. Land value and product pricing were the few variables believed to have increased as a result of tourism on the Peninsula. For conservation, the PI eco-lodge property had the highest rates of reforestation within the Nicoya Peninsula and remains the scale most reforested in both forest cover change and total forest cover. In fact, at the landscape scale, we fi nd that the Pacifi c coast of the Nicoya, where the bulk of ecotourism occurs, has undergone reforestation, whereas forest interiors have been deforested. Historically, reforestation occurred as cattle ranching credit programs were halted by the government and households in the area left to fi nd better job opportunities. The PI eco-lodge, as a source of good employment, resulted in worker migration back to the surrounding area, resulting, in some cases, in increased deforestation. Overall, we feel that the PI eco-lodge serves as an example of successful ecotourism. However, increasing development in the region, in particular by standard hotel operations and large condo developments, seeks to capitalise on the region's natural beauty and may reverse land cover trends if they are not accompanied by adequate forest conservation strategies and stresses the importance of monitoring and assessing the impacts of accommodations tied to nature-based tourism operations.

No abstract

Unanticipated events can cause considerable economic hardship for poor rural households. Some types of negative shocks, for example weather‐related agricultural losses and vector‐borne diseases, are expected to occur more frequently as a result of climate change. In this paper we measure the role of household‐ and location‐specific characteristics in conditioning behavioural responses to a wide range of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks. We use data from 8,000 rural households in 25 developing countries, compiled in the global database of the Poverty Environment Network. We employ a hierarchical multinomial logit model to identify the importance of characteristics observed at different levels of aggregation on a set of strategies aimed at coping with economic shocks. Results indicate that in response to idiosyncratic shocks, households tend to deplete financial and durable assets, whereas covariate and thus often climate‐related shocks predominantly result in reduced consumption. Households in sites characterised by high asset wealth tend to cope with shocks in a more proactive way than those in sites with average or below average asset wealth, but the role of asset types in conditioning shock responses varies across regions. Our findings have implications for rural development and climate change adaptation strategies.