Tourist parks target local communities in Tanzania through tourism gains

TANZANIA (eTN) – Through tourist benefit-sharing initiatives, Tanzania wildlife parks management is looking at social benefits to the local communities neighboring nature-protected areas through touri

TANZANIA (eTN) – Through tourist benefit-sharing initiatives, Tanzania wildlife parks management is looking at social benefits to the local communities neighboring nature-protected areas through tourist income-sharing initiatives.

Through tourism, Tanzania parks supports community projects in villages neighboring the national parks through its Social Community Responsibility (SCR) program known as Good Neighborliness, an initiative that has shown a positive trend, bringing reconciliation between people and wild animals. Now, people in villages appreciate the importance of wildlife and tourism in their lives.

For the past 25 years, proponents of conservation in Tanzania and elsewhere in East Africa have pointed to the importance of conservation efforts outside national park boundaries and within human-inhabited landscapes as critical to maintaining healthy migratory wildlife populations.

Just outside the national parks in Tanzania, there are over 100 villages, of which 42 share a border with the parks. Many of these villages were integrated into the Tanzanian national parks.

The community conservation program, Good Neighborliness, has been established with a purpose of educating local communities on the importance of wildlife conservation and tourism, while sharing incomes generated from tourist business conducted inside and outside the parks.

The Community Conservation Service (CCS) is an Outreach Program of TANAPA (Tanzania National Parks) that is extended to surrounding communities with a focus on local people and governments up to the district level.

Benefits obtained through Tanzania national parksโ€™ Support for Community Initiated Projects (SCIP) fund are recognized as wildlife-related benefits in receiving villages and have made a significant contribution to changing the โ€œpark-peopleโ€ relationship, and this has reduced conflicts between wildlife conservationists and the local communities neighboring the parks.

The SCIP fund was established as part of the strategic planning process. The fund program works with communities bordering or close to national parks and stresses support for community-initiated projects.

Funds, currently amounting to 7.5 percent of each parkโ€™s operations, get allocated to the local communities. Generally the park contributes up to 70 percent of the local community project cost, and the community contributes the remaining 30 percent.

Sustainable tourism development has been one of the strategies being given special emphasis by the government of Tanzania as a means towards poverty alleviation, with the understanding that sustainable tourism development addresses needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their needs.

As part of the strategy, tourism sector policies emphasize active community involvement in sustainable utilization of natural and cultural resources.

Conservation education programs have been designed to organize park visits for local communities, training for communities on project management and accounting, and the use of appropriate technology. Nature conservation clubs are established in schools, teachers are trained, and conservation films are shown in the communities.

From a single national park in 1961 when Tanzania became independent from Britain, today there are 15 national parks, rich with wildlife and a wide diversity of plants. A new park is planned inside Lake Victoria to protect rescued and endangered species.

Standing as tourist magnets, wildlife parks are the leading sources of Tanzaniaโ€™s foreign currency accrued from photographic tourism, hotel concession fees, and other levies from safari companies operating in these protected areas.

Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, founder of the Tanzanian nation, deliberately advocated for the need to establish wildlife parks and develop a national tourist base, taking into account that tourism under British colonial powers basically covered amateur hunting. Wildlife conservation for sustainable tourism development was not a priority for the colonial administrators during those past days.

National parks have successfully maintained a competitive advantage over other tourist sites adding value to tourist sites outside the parks. The parks have become the leading tourist selling point for Tanzania, and this has made tourism an important sector of the economy for Tanzania’s development.

In recent years, tourism has contributed towards 17 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 25 percent of export earnings in foreign exchange, said Allan Kijazi, the Director General of Tanzania National Parks.

Tanzania’s wildlife conservation has set a solid foundation for re-thinking and repositioning the national parks management and trustees on a global roadmap of conservation. This repositioning aims at addressing a number of challenges, which include poaching, disappearance of wildlife corridors, climate change, technological advances, and understanding of the ecology of the parks systems.

According to the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) projections, Africa will witness the tourist sector grow four-fold by 2020. With the diversity of tourism products in the African region, proper planning, and political will, this continent stands to benefit greatly from tourism.

African countries have made tourism a priority and committed resources to create conducive environment for its growth.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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