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Kawesqar woman weaving a basket

Kawésqar Community Tourism & Empowerment Project

Community-run tourism to celebrate the forgotten heritage of Patagonia’s indigenous people

While best known for its iconic glaciers and peaks, Torres del Paine and its gateway community of Puerto Natales also possess a rich cultural heritage. Much of this heritage is rooted in the history and traditions of the region’s indigenous people – the Kawésqar. A seafaring, nomadic people, the Kawésqar were among the first inhabitants of southern Chile’s channels and fjords. Today, only 13 Kawésqar communities remain across the Magallanes region.  

Like many first peoples, the Kawesqár have been marginalized from the local tourism economy. Despite the fact that over 260,000 tourists visit Torres del Paine each year, few learn about the Kawésqar and their unique heritage. Traditions and stories of the past tend to be overshadowed by the dramatic natural landscapes the area is known for. The predominant historical narrative centers around the figure of the gaucho, cowboys descended from European immigrants.

Our Role

The Torres del Paine Legacy Fund is working with members of the Kawésqar pueblo to revitalize their culture through a series of capacity-building, tourism, and entrepreneurship trainings. Ultimately, this project will allow the participating communities to build a common narrative and create a space where Kawésqar can share their rich history and traditions with visitors and residents. The project imagines Kawésqar exchanging their traditions with tourists, and selling their food, art, and guide services. The Legacy Fund and its partners will equip Kawésqar communities with the necessary skills and knowledge to sustainably manage and develop their own tourism products.

This indigenous empowerment project aims to enhance destination sustainability by:

  • Raising awareness and increasing appreciation of the region’s indigenous heritage
  • Preserving and celebrating waning cultural traditions
  • Expanding income generating opportunities for the Kawésqar people
  • Providing a more diverse, immersive, and authentic visitor experience

The Torres del Paine Legacy Fund

The Torres del Paine Legacy Fund is a travel philanthropy fund established by Sustainable Travel International in partnership with the Fink Family Foundation that is ensuring a more sustainable future for Chilean Patagonia.

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Our Partners

  • Kawesqar
  • Evoluzion

Related Work

Repairing Eroded Trails

Restoring Torres del Paine’s most popular trekking route, the Base Torres trail.

Improving Recycling Infrastructure

Installing and supporting the expansion of the first recycling system in Puerto Natales, the gateway community to Torres del Paine National Park.

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Giving locals a voice in tourism development in St. Kitts

Implementing an island-wide resident survey to gauge community perceptions of tourism

Employing 1 in 10 people globally, tourism has the potential to benefit a large number of people. By creating jobs, driving infrastructure improvements, and promoting inclusive growth, tourism is a powerful tool to fight poverty and foster community development.

With all these benefits, one might assume that local residents would be fully supportive of tourism in their backyards. The problem is that sometimes tourism development has the opposite effect and diminishes local quality of life. Without proper planning, tourism growth can bring about new challenges for locals, such as unaffordable housing prices, dwindling resources, and a loss of cultural authenticity. Over the last year, there’s been increasing global discussion around the issue of “overtourism” and its consequences in more popular destinations, where some communities are literally telling tourists to go home.

How then does a destination prevent this situation from happening before it’s too late? It all comes down to finding the balance between tourism growth and local needs.

To ensure that tourism enriches local communities, destination managers must pay attention to resident concerns and engage them in development plans. Happy residents play a major part in creating an enjoyable visitor experience and successful tourism industry. When residents win, everyone wins.

Our Role

The Caribbean island of St. Kitts is a destination that is well aware of the importance of sustainable, community-driven tourism. The warm and welcoming Kittitian people are undeniably the heart and soul of the island. The St. Kitts Ministry of Tourism is working to make sure that they are at the heart of tourism as well, by giving them a voice in development.

To gauge local attitudes toward tourism, Sustainable Travel International supported the Ministry in administering a resident survey in July 2017. This was the first survey of this kind in St. Kitts. Over 320 Kittitians, representing all parishes and demographics completed the survey.  The results examine how well tourism in St. Kitts is meeting local needs, creating opportunities for residents, and impacting their quality of life.

Understanding resident concerns is the starting point. The next step is taking action to actually address any existing or potential issues. The Ministry is using the survey findings to guide policy and program interventions, making it a valuable tool for community development.

Of course, as tourism grows and the destination changes, residents’ feelings and priorities will change as well. Engaging residents should be an ongoing process. We will continue to support the Ministry to create additional avenues for residents to share their opinions and be involved in decision-making, as well as implement future surveys to monitor changes over time.To learn more about the other ways that St. Kitts is encouraging sustainable development and community-based tourism, click here.

Header Photo Credit: St. Kitts Tourism

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Related Work

St. Kitts

Learn more about how we’re helping St. Kitts work towards a more sustainable future.

People & Culture

Learn more about how we’re working to ensure that tourism development supports communities and improves local quality of life.

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Samoan women

Samoa Sustainable Tourism Charter and Foundation

Encouraging sustainable business practices in Samoa’s tourism industry and enhancing support of local initiatives. 

Located in the Pacific, Samoa is comprised of ten islands, the largest and most known being ‘Upolu and Savai’i. Each island features distinct landscapes from tropical rainforests and volcanic landscapes to crystal clear lagoons and sandy beaches. The tourism industry is critical to the prosperity of Samoa’s economy and the livelihoods of the local people. According to the South Pacific Tourism Organization (SPTO), over 139,000 tourists visited the islands in 2015. Despite the influx of foreign visitors, authentic cultural traditions and values still dominate every aspect of life on the islands.

As a small island nation, Samoa’s ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to environmental challenges brought on by climate change, unplanned development, and natural disasters. Impacts from mass tourism can also threaten traditional knowledge and cultural expression, which play an integral role in the Samoan way of life.

Sustainably managed tourism has the potential to address these threats by enhancing climate change adaptation, strengthening community resilience, and funding environmental conservation. In addition to environmental protection, tourism also represents an opportunity to conserve the island’s cultural heritage, improve community well-being, and create career options for the Samoan youth.

Samoa has been a regional leader in sustainable tourism interventions, but there is still potential for the destination to further engage tourism businesses and travelers in destination stewardship and be a model for other destinations in the region to follow. Sustainable Travel International is collaborating with the Samoa Tourism Authority to help small and large businesses play a more active role in ensuring sustainable tourism development.

Our Role

Sustainability Charter

Hotels, tour operators, and other tourism providers have the power to either harm or benefit the destinations where they operate. Their impact depends largely on how they run their business – from who they hire to how they dispose of their waste.

Part of our work in Samoa is focused on guiding these businesses—through the development of a Sustainability Charter—to identify and adopt more sustainable business practices. That is, practices that are respectful of the local people and environment, such as composting food waste and sourcing products locally. Giving local stakeholders and community leaders ownership of this process will ensure that the practices are feasible, appropriate, and impactful within the destination context. The Charter will also help to reinforce business innovation by highlighting and providing recognition to those businesses that are finding creative ways to incorporate sustainability. Widespread business commitment to these practices will contribute to community well-being, economic development, and environmental conservation.

Foundation for a Sustainable Samoa

In addition to encouraging business sustainability, our work in Samoa is also focused on using the power of the tourism industry to strengthen support for local conservation and community development efforts. To accomplish this, we partnered with the community to develop a travel philanthropy fund for Samoa.

The travel philanthropy fund, the Foundation for a Sustainable Samoa, was launched in 2017 with a mission of maximizing community benefits from tourism in Samoa by creating opportunities for local people to improve their well-being and safeguard their natural and cultural resources. The Foundation is dedicated to supporting small-scale destination stewardship initiatives that contribute to the following four priority sustainability causes: youth career development, environmental education, community economic development, and waste management.  By capturing a largely untapped donor base of travelers and tourism businesses, the program will create a new funding mechanism for projects in need of financial assistance. In addition, the fund will raise traveler and resident awareness of key environmental and social issues facing the islands. By educating and uniting destination stakeholders around common causes, the fund will inspire collaboration to more effectively solve these problems. The fund will also be a way for stakeholders to highlight and share Samoa’s commitment to sustainability. By sharing stories of Samoa’s success, not only will the fund inspire activism locally, but it will also provide a sustainability model for other Pacific destinations to follow.

Location

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Destination: Samoa

Region: Pacific Islands

Dates

2016-2017

Our Partners

  • Samoa Hotel Association
  • Samoa Tourism Authority

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Planning for Community-Based Ecotourism in Panama

With the abundance of natural attractions, it may come as a surprise that most of the 2.3 million annual visitors to the country rarely venture outside Panama City. However, until recently, Panama had not actively developed or promoted tourism in its parks, protected areas, and more rural areas. Sustainable Travel International partnered with the Republic of Panama Government to use this opportunity for tourism development as a means to increase conservation and create benefits for local communities.

Benefits of Ecotourism

Rural and Indigenous Communities

In Panama and elsewhere, responsibly developed ecotourism holds the potential to stimulate local economies, benefit indigenous communities, and combat rural poverty. By creating alternative livelihoods for communities in and around protected areas, ecotourism presents an opportunity for indigenous people support themselves and their families as tour guides, food service providers, or handicraft vendors.

Biodiversity and Conservation

Because tourism often flourishes in biodiversity hotspots, ecotourism also has the unique ability to contribute to the protection of some of the earth’s most valuable natural areas and ecosystems. The revenues from park entrance fees and tourism concessions provide added funding that can be channeled into conservation activities and park maintenance. In addition, the income generated by ecotourism provides an economic incentive for local people to protect the natural environment so that it remains a valuable tourism asset. By educating travelers on the ecosystems they visit and their role in environmental stewardship, ecotourism can also increase traveler activism and support of conservation.

Our Role

In 2015 and 2016, our team worked with local stakeholders to analyze regional opportunities and challenges and map out a country-wide action plan for developing ecotourism in Panama’s protected areas. The resulting plan includes specific strategies for developing ecotourism in a manner that will enhance protection of Panama’s sensitive habitats and wildlife, promote inclusion of rural and indigenous communities and local culture, and foster capacity building and skills development. In March 2016, the Government of Panama and private sector officially adopted the plan and implementation is already underway.

Location

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Destination: Panama

Region: Central America

Dates

2015-2016

Our Partners

  • MiAmbiente
  • Ministry of Tourism Panama
  • APTSO
  • IDB
  • GEF

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Aruba View

Engaging the Aruba Community in Sustainable Tourism Planning

Our team visited Aruba to present the results of the rapid destination diagnostic and meet with local stakeholders to map out a more sustainable future for the tourism industry

Header image by David Kirsch / flickr

Located just north of Venezuela in the southern Caribbean, Aruba is a small island spanning only 70 square miles (181 square kilometers). While just over 100,000 people call the island ‘home’, these inhabitants are by no means the only people you’ll find on the island. Though Aruba may be small, its allure is mighty.  The constant sunshine, long stretches of white-sand beaches, and cool trade winds attract millions of visitors to Aruba’s shores year after year. In 2015, over 1.8 million people visited the island and took part in activities such as diving, kite-surfing, and exploring the desert-like hills of Arikok National Park.

Given the small size of the island and the limited availability of natural resources, local stakeholders felt a need to determine how the tourism industry could more positively impact the environment and local community. With the aim of encouraging greater collaboration and planning around sustainable destination management, Aruba joined the Sustainable Destinations Alliance for the Americas (SDAA) in 2016.

 Eagle Beach by Chris Ford / flickr; Arikok National Park by Christina Leigh Morgan / flickr; Tourists in downtown Oranjestad by Roberto Maldeno / flickr

Identifying the issues and taking action

We began our work in Aruba last year with an initial onsite diagnostic in October 2016. During this first visit, we had the opportunity to meet with over 50 stakeholders from the government, businesses, and local community. By listening to their insights and seeing the island’s key tourism sites in-person, we were able to gain a better understanding of the current sustainability status of Aruba’s tourism industry. At the start of the new year, we returned to Aruba for a second time to share the diagnostic results with local stakeholders and to help them outline the next steps they’d like to take.

Over 35 stakeholders, including representatives from the Aruba Tourism Authority, local hotels and tour operators, and other government entities, gathered for the workshop we hosted in Oranjestad. We began the workshop by presenting the diagnostic results. Remember how we said over 1.8 MILLION tourists came to Aruba? While these millions of tourists were exploring the island and pumping their dollars into the local economy, they also used energy, created waste and used thousands of liters of drinking water. The results of the diagnostic highlighted the different sustainability issues that we discovered within the tourism industry in Aruba.  Some of these issues were inefficient waste management, poor visitor management and monitoring, and low community involvement within the industry.

Following the presentation of the results, we facilitated a discussion and action-planning activity. When asked which of the sustainability issues were the most important to them, there was resounding agreement among the attendees that dealing with the island’s waste should be one of the top priorities. Waste is a major problem affecting the island, especially since the current landfill is reaching its limit. One issue attendees cited was the occasional waste burning that occurs in the landfill. This causes air pollution and poses an environmental and health risk. Not only does the lack of a sustainable waste model waste negatively affect the visitor experience, but it also harms the island’s marine life and affects the quality of life of Aruba’s residents.

Participants were then tasked with coming up for ideas about what action should be taken to address the waste issue. They discussed the pros and cons of having an incinerator, converting the waste into gas so that this energy could be used, and increasing recycling capacity. All of these options need careful analysis and the involvement of other players, so these will be the next steps to ensure that Aruba manages its waste in an appropriate manner.

Local destination stakeholders attended an action planning workshop in January 2017

Priority Action Projects

In addition to the sustainable waste processing project, the participants identified three additional priority action projects during the workshop:

Development of sustainability tourism standards: This project involves designing and implementing a set of guidelines for tourism sector providers including tour operators, restaurants, accommodation, tour guides, and transport providers. The creation of these standards will help ensure that tourism activities are performed in a manner that is safe, environmentally responsible, respectful of heritage and beneficial for the local communities.

Creation of a formal watchdog platform for the Destination Development Plan/SDAA actions: This project will establish a multi-stakeholder destination stewardship council that will enforce existing laws and policies as well as oversee the long-term implementation of the destination action plan. This watchdog platform will help to protect Aruba’s natural and cultural resources by improving the management of tourism sites and mitigating negative tourism impacts.

‘Bario Boost: Mi Dushi Bario’: This project will set up participatory platforms in each bario (neighborhood) that will give communities the opportunity to take part in tourism-related planning and decision-making. These platforms will also help to increase resident pride and awareness of their role in the tourism value chain.

While these changes won’t happen overnight; the progress that destination stakeholders have made so far in developing an action plan is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. We look forward to continuing our work with Aruba and helping them make this vision a reality.

Learn more about the Sustainable Destinations Alliance for the Americas

Ecotourism livelihood development in Indonesia

Increasing the perceived value of forest conservation through ecotourism development

Made up of over 17,000 islands dotting the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Indonesia is a country with rich natural and cultural wonders. From dense rainforests and towering volcanoes, to picturesque mountain valleys and secluded stretches of beach, Indonesia possesses some of the world’s most spectacular biodiversity. Indonesia has the third largest expanse of tropical forest in the world. At least 30 million people depend directly on Indonesia’s forests for their livelihood but deforestation rates are some of the highest in the world.

The areas most at risk include the carbon rich peat forests in Kalimantan (the Indonesian portion of Borneo) as well as areas of northern Sumatra and Papua. From sequestering carbon and combating climate change, to providing freshwater for local communities, these forests represent a precious and vital resource. In addition, these forests are home to a number of critically threatened species such as orangutans and Sumatran rhinos and elephants. Reducing deforestation will help conserve the environment, protect rare species, safeguard the community’s livelihood, and preserve the destination for years to come.

Our Role

In 2015, USAID launched the LESTARI project to combat Indonesia’s growing threat of deforestation. LESTARI means “everlasting” in Indonesian and the project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve protected area management in Central Kalimantan, northern Sumatra, and Papua.

LESTARI  is a five-year project implemented by a variety of partners under the leadership of Tetra Tech and funded by the United States Government. Sustainable Travel International’s role in this project focused on identifying and developing alternative livelihoods through ecotourism.  Our specific goal was to develop a series of small scale ecotourism partnerships in Central Kalimantan and Aceh that have high conservation value, bring community benefit and are economically viable, appealing to domestic and international markets. Areas of particular focus are Sebangau National Park, Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park, Gunung Leuser National Park, and the Trumon-Singkil Wildlife Reserve.

LESTARI targets a 41 percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction in its landscapes by project completion in 2020.

Location

destination pin icon

Destination: Indonesia

Region: Asia

Dates

2015-2016

Our Partners

  • Tetra Tech
  • USAID

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