The role of protected areas in tourismbased regional development in arid Australia:

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• The role of protected areas in tourism-based
  regional development in arid Australia
• Challenges in promoting a destination perspective
• A/Prof. Pascal Tremblay, School of Tourism and
  Hospitality
• Charles Darwin University

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Premises

• DKCRCs general interest contributing to
  livelihoods / wealth-creation
• Tourisms importance to the NT, Centre region and
  arid regions economy
• Importance of protected areas in NT and arid
  regions tourism key assets

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Premises

• Scoping desert tourism study
• protected areas constitute key attractions for
  tourism in remote regions of Australia
• they play a central role in tourists motivations
  and in the destination choices of many tourists
  segments
• In the NT they are accepted as the most important
  drawcards for tourism in general

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Premises

• Recent general literature on parks/protected
  areas
• Parks authorities attempt to satisfy
  multiple-competing and complex objectives in
  Australia conservation-dominated
• They are insufficiently funded to fulfill any of
  those/ there is a mismatch between breadth, scope
  and complexity of objectives and funding
• Funding goes mainly towards what parks as
  organizational cultures are most comfortable with

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Premises

• Recent general literature on parks/protected
  areas
• They are ill-equipped to deal with tourism
  strategic management and marketing (including
  product development and innovations) and do not
  hold appropriate competencies (beyond visitors
  management and infrastructures)
• They are increasingly expected to address
  economic development goals (especially in less
  developed areas)

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Premises

• General literature on desert tourism (from
  scoping study)
• Much of desert tourism around the World takes
  place in/around a small number of high-profile,
  well established, resourced, protected and
  increasingly marketed desert locations
• Tourism tier - Pressure on infrastructure and
  funding of those, producing many concentrated
  tourism employment opportunities but in secluded
  resort-enclaves
• Non-tourism tier Poorly funded, degradation of
  landscape, loss of sense of place, poor benefits
  from tourism to surrounding communities

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Premises Parks and tourism global trends

• International scale emergence of park-icons
  playing critical marketing role in building
  destination attractiveness increasingly
  competitive and over-supply for tourism (Eagles
  suggests need to concentrate)
• Regional scale need to rationalise protected
  area resources with respect to their role in
  tourism minimizing infrastructures costs in
  some locations and taking into consideration
  economic development contributions

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Premises

• Conventional approach to visitors management
  Recreational/Tourism Opportunity spectrum type
  assumes visitors/tourists can be differentiated
  with respect to their activities (applies to
  local recreationists) hence parks can be
  categorised by uses against environmental
  fragility
• Tourists can be dealt with by being made to fit
  with specific park types or else self-selection

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Premises parks management literature

• The focus of parks (internationally) is shifting
  away from abstract conservation of wilderness,
  or of biodiversity in general towards
  performance-based objectives, linked with (in no
  particular order)
• Recreational opportunities for locals
• Conservation - natural assets / biodiversity
  (multiple scales)
• Conservation - cultural heritage (NT recent point
  of differentiation)
• Economic development in the brave new World

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Child, B. Parks in transition biodiversity,
rural development and the bottom line,
Earthscan, IUCN South Africa, 2004
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Premises Parks literature still

• The new thinking on parks management is
• Funding needs a decentralized approach (relative
  to central bureaucracy)
• Need to be able to track values provided, who
  gets benefits, flows in/out of bureaucracy back
  into parks from central to regional
• Objective link funding flows with measured
  performance in some way
• Some argue that all types of objectives can
  benefit from the decentralized performance-based
  management (including conservation)

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Premises

• The new thinking on parks management is
• Need to move away from the rational-comprehensive
  planning approach (MASTERPLAN - useful only for
  tame problems not complexity) towards strategic
  management
• Move away from attempting to control the
  environment towards adapting to challenges
  involving values and disagreements over
  applicability of various bodies of scientific
  knowledge
• Move away from park experts knowledge towards
  increased public participation on setting values
  and setting performance indicators and monitoring

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Premises - overview

• The new thinking on parks management is
• FUNDING CRISIS DUE TO
• Lack of assessment of performance related to
  biodiversity, as well as social and economic
  objectives
• Lack of accountability/transparency due to
  multiple often not prioritised objectives
• Excessive political control of funding
  communities dont trust-embrace parks as assets
  (beyond recreation)

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Recent tourism research in the NT

• CDU Tourism Research Group has been
  investigating
• Economic valuations of Kakadu NP and Watarrka NP
  through tourism
• Market research into motivations to visit
  surrounding regions, and the protected areas
  themselves
• Provide some stylized findings below

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Recent tourism research in the NT

• Main reasons for visiting KNP Economic survey
  2004

Score
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Recent tourism research in the NT

• Main reasons for visiting KNP Economic survey
  2004
• Visitors value all landscape-related features
  (correlated between them, not discriminating)
• Visitors differentiated with respect to intensity
  of their valuation (overall), not by type of
  value
• Landscape (with aesthetic, natural and cultural
  attributes/expressions) is what is valued in
  general IT IS THE RESOURCE THAT MUST BE MANAGED

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Recent tourism research in the NT

• Economic valuations of KNP and WNP
• Produced conservative estimates defensible in
  terms of economic methodology and integrity of
  approach not as large as expected by agencies
  (used through political Govt mechanisms, not
  management)
• Final values inappropriate for funding imperative
  (in particular Watarrka NP could not be separated
  from Uluru and it was nearly impossible to
  attribute value to WNP on that scale)

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Recent tourism research in the NT

• Economic valuations of KNP and WNP
• Suggests that exercise undertaken with the wrong
  scale
• What ought to be assessed is the value of the
  landscape and regional park system to tourism in
  a region like the Centre or the Top End that
  would very large indeed
• Funding of parks, valuations of park uses and
  strategic management of parks should be based on
  regional scale on purely instrumental grounds

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Propositions Generic park values

• Landscape need to be conserved and managed by
  assessing their values on a relevant regional
  scale
• Conservation, social and economic objectives of
  protected areas ought to be dealt with at that
  scale
• Linking benefits from landscape conservation,
  use (including tourism) and management to arid,
  indigenous and other communities needs to take
  place on that scale

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Propositions tourism perspective 1

• Only at a regional scale is it possible to manage
  landscape resources from a tourism viewpoint
• For the sake of minimizing tourism infrastructure
  costs, especially in remote regions (allocating
  different roles to parks choosing between them
  with respect to marketing and products)
• To manage landscape integrity (natural, cultural,
  social, sense of place, etc.) at the
  destination level

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Propositions tourism perspective 2

• Only at a regional scale is it possible to manage
  landscape resources from a tourism viewpoint
• To build tourism intelligence/competencies that
  fit the way tourists experiences take place
  best compromise for market specific
  considerations for instance 4WD
• To contribute to destination and product
  development through interpretation of those
  landscapes - a critical role of protected areas
  in telling the story.

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A regional park management system

• Should go beyond reiterating the broadly stated
  social purposes for which a protected areas is
  established to defining objectives we nedd
  more explicit statements of what is to be
  accomplished (Eagles, McCool and Haynes 2002).
• Ought to set management objectives that can be
  assessed, related to the values/aspirations of
  the relevant communitiesn (at that scale)

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A regional park management system

• For instance, Eagles (in press) has recently
  suggested that the park system in the Canadian
  province of Alberta could consider such
  objectives (with targets) as
• Contribute to the diversification of local
  economies (about tourism, arts, bushfoods and
  other synergies)
• reduce economic leakages
• Supporting directly product development
• developing a local first prioritized employment
  strategy (not necessarily tourism related)
• promoting the increase of daily expenditures by
  site visitors
• initiating locally tendered operating expenses
  for each sites.

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The End I suspect
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Appendices

• Masterplans and reality
• Altmans dilemmas
• New initiatives and Uluru
• Joint management

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Appendix 1

• On Masterplans and operational reality

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P122 in Child quote The continuing focus on
ever more elaborate, and mostly impracticable,
rigid park plans need to change (). We need to
understand why so many park plans either remain
unimplemented, or after a year or two of
enthusiastic adoption are quietly shelved and
forgotten. I suggest that this pattern reflects,
in large measure, a conflict between a blueprint
management model and the reality of dealing with
complex systems. Those in head offices and
ivory towers are comfortable with blueprints and
rigid project management cycles, whereas those in
the field are faced with the realities of dealing
with the inevitable shocks and surprises of
complex system behaviour and the despair of
attempting the impossible. The despair is
heightened in management cultures where the
principle of subsidiarity is replaced by highly
centralized control.
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Appendix 2a

• Jon Altmans dilemma for tourism and Aboriginal
  communities located in/around parks
• Aborigines, Tourism, and Development the
  Northern Territory Experience, North Australia
  Research Unit, Darwin, xvi 345 pp., 1988
• 'Tourism dilemmas for Aboriginal Australians',
  Annals of Tourism Research, 16 (4) 456-76, 1989.
• (with J. Finlayson) 'Aborigines, tourism and
  sustainable development', Journal of Tourism
  Research, 4 (1) 38-50, 1993
• The economic impact of tourism on the Mutitjulu
  community, in Central Land Council,
  Pitjantjatjara Council and Mutitjulu Community
  Sharing the Park Anangu Initiatives in Ayers
  Rock Tourism, Institute for Aboriginal
  Development, Alice Springs, 73112, 1991.
• The economic impact of tourism at Uluru National
  Park on other Aboriginal communities in Central
  Australia, 113136 in Central Land Council,
  Pitjantjatjara Council and Mutitjulu Community,,
  1991.

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Appendix 2b

• Some Altman paradoxes (in my words)
• Tourisms dependence on Aboriginal lands
• Aboriginal peoples relationship to the market
  economy, developmentalism and other values /
  the centrality of non-cash benefits or incomes
• Aboriginal people preference for indirect
  contributions/relations to tourism

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Appendix 2c

• The 3 Altman dilemmas (in my words)
• Net benefits from tourism likely to be positive
  but low for a number of well argued cultural,
  governance, circumstance micro reasons
• Non-economic costs can be substantial and
  difficult to measure in advance
• Diversity of attitudes towards tourism even
  within homogeneous cultural groups

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Regional/landscape-based scale

• Must recognise that if the landscape is the
  asset, Aboriginal claims on the
  nature-culture-land nexus are great and lead to
  business/economic opportunities beyond tourism
• Would allow parks to play a role in leveraging
  tourism economic benefits to invest in
  alternative economic (market customary)
  activity if landscape is the asset not only
  local culture expression
• This applies to business development and to
  employment

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Regional/landscape-based scale

• It allows to take a strategic view of the region
  and possible specialisation
• There is an ethical issue with restricting the
  landscape-based tourism benefits to specific
  local communities because of political expediency
  some region-level redistribution of tourism
  benefits can take place.
• It allows community-based choice and
  differentiation with respect to participation in
  various types of activities including tourism,
  direct or indirect (dilemma 1) and management of
  tourism costs (dilemma 2).

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Regional/landscape-based scale

• It allows to take a strategic view of the region
  and possible specialisation
• It is also beneficial for locally-differentiated
  enterprise development
• It is also beneficial for the regional
  destination that needs such differentiation,
  homegrown product development, and various mixes
  of aesthetic/natural/cultural assets for various
  segments

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Regional/landscape-based scale

• Needs serious open research !

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Appendice 3a

• On Central Australia tourism politics and
  research needs
• Need a regional outlook that brings together
  Uluru and other Protected areas together in terms
  of assessing how parks contribute to various
  objectives of the region
• No the separation between government levels is
  not particularly useful at this point in time

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Appendice 3b

• On Central Australia tourism politics and
  research needs
• The regional park initiatives from NT Parks (with
  or without WHA status) could be useful if
• It does not lead to puerile competition with
  Uluru but includes it
• It does take a performance-based and transparent
  approach (not just another layer of complexity
  and politics)
• The status, economic contribution and value of
  Yulara (to the region, to the NT and to
  Australia) is considered, researched and opened
  up to the public

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Appendice 4

• On Joint management in NT parks
• Intent is good in theory need open research and
  assessment early on
• Will need courage in setting performance
  indicators that reflect community values with
  respect to what parks are supposed to do
• Will be limited in progressing if managed on a
  park by park basis due to fragmentation of
  Aboriginal voice and interests (admittedly
  heterogeneous)