Protected Areas, Sustainable Tourism and Community Livelihood Linkages

The book uses a multi-disciplinary approach to address lessons learned and challenges encountered over the years in different ecological, economic, political and cultural contexts.

Protected areas were originally established as recreational spaces and to protect some components of nature; however, today they are also expected to provide an increasing range of benefits to an array of people. Protected areas no longer simply “protect” but they also provide ecosystem services and facilitate poverty reduction via local development, ecotourism, and sustainable resource use. Integrating tourism and conservation with existing local historical, socio-economic, and institutional landscapes is associated with the promotion of local community participation in resource management. The book adopts an interdisciplinary approach to understand social-ecological systems that explain the relationship between protected areas, tourism, and community livelihoods linkages. The book provides a platform for dialogue to develop a better understanding of the complex relationships between protected areas, tourism, and community livelihoods linkages. Due to the role tourism plays in poverty alleviation, conservation, empowerment and addressing other environmental and social challenges, the book also connects tourism with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers of tourism, conservation, natural resource management, sustainable development as well as professionals and policymakers involved in conservation policy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

Moren Tibabo Stone is Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Tourism Studies at the University of Botswana, Department of Environmental Science. His research interests include sustainable tourism development and management, ecotourism, community-based tourism, protected areas conservation and community livelihoods dynamics.

Lesego Senyana Stone is Associate Professor in Tourism Management at the University of Botswana in the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management. Her research interests are in sustainable tourism development with specific reference to nature-based tourism, community-based tourism and community participation in tourism.

Gyan P. Nyaupane is Professor in the School of Community Resources & Development at Arizona State University. He has research experience in the fields of protected areas, public lands and sustainable tourism planning and policy. His research interests include understanding human-environment interactions, sustainable communities, resilience, indigeneity, nature-based tourism, and policy and planning.