The socio-economic impact of Africa’s oldest marine park

Abstract

South African National Parks (SANParks) plays a major role in the tourism industry and has three primary functions, namely to conserve biodiversity, to create tourism and recreational opportunities and to build strong community relations. These parks, therefore, have a definite socio-economic impact on adjacent communities, although little is known about this impact. The main aim of this study was to determine the socio-economic impact of Africa’s oldest marine park, namely Tsitsikamma National Park, which forms part of the newly created Garden Route National Park. This was done by conducting three surveys during April 2008: a visitor’s survey (156 respondents), a community survey (132 respondents) and a business survey (11 respondents). We found that the park has a positive economic impact on the surrounding area and that the community exhibits a favourable attitude towards Tsitsikamma National Park. The results also differed when compared to similar studies conducted at other national parks in South Arica and one of the main reasons for this was that the park is located in a touristic area. For a greater impact however, the park should expand its marine activities, while communication with the local community could also be improved.Conservation implications: Good community relations and ecotourism activities are important components of good conservation practices. This research indicates that tourism activities not only generated funds for conservation, but also benefited the local communities of Tsitsikamma National Park. The positive attitude of local communities makes conservation of biodiversity more sustainable.

From measuring outcomes to providing inputs: Governance, management, and local development for more effective marine protected areas

“…Tourism has significant potential as an MPA financing mechanism [15,[64][65][66] and may lead to economic benefits at a broader scale; however, the level of local community benefit from and involvement in tourism can be minimal. Some MPAs, such as the Great Barrier Reef MPA in Australia [67], Mendes Island MPA in the Mediterranean [68], and Tsitskamma National Park in South Africa [69], have resulted in significant increases in tourism visitation and revenue [51,70]. A global study of 78 coral reef MPAs found that 75% of tourism jobs were retained locally [71].…”

“…Ecological services, such as coastal protection, may also lead to reduced vulnerability and improved household security. Yet MPAs and related developments can also lead to contrary socio-economic outcomes, including increased conflict and political struggle, exacerbated vulnerabilities, negative sociocultural change, increased restrictions, decreased levels of power and alienation in natural resource management processes, forced migration, loss of assets, increased social tension, loss of social and educational facilities, inequitable distribution of benefits, further marginalization of marginalized groups, loss of tenure, as well as decreased food security in the short term and for some groups [10,16,41,43,50,53,54,65,69,[72][73][74][75]88,89,91,93,[95][96][97][98][99][100]. In short, livelihood and socio-economic outcomes from MPAs vary widely and can range from very positive to very negative depending on the context and inputs.…”

“…Development policies that restrict the scale and type of developments can also ensure that development is kept within ecologically and socially sustainable limits [127]. Mechanisms to ensure that benefits are shared equitably and that leakage of financial and employment benefits is minimized need to be put into place [69,74,75,89,153,173,174]. A wide variety of organizations at various scales can have important roles to play in ensuring that development programs are successful [73,111]-including international NGOs acting as intermediaries in PES projects [126], businesses identifying development opportunities [76], and community and user associations advocating for local people [55].…”

“…MPAs can lead to increased food security, wealth and household assets, and levels of employment (particularly from tourism), diversified livelihoods, improved governance, greater access to health and social infrastructure, revitalized cultural institutions, strengthened community organization, greater participation in natural resource management, increased empowerment of women and reinvigorated common property regimes for local communities [16,40,48,[50][51][52]69,73,74,[88][89][90][91][92][93][94]. Ecological services, such as coastal protection, may also lead to reduced vulnerability and improved household security.…”

Exploring the economic impact of national parks on the local economy. Functional approach in the context of Poland’s transition economy

“…The research methodology was based mostly on measuring the visitors' spending within the park and qualitative surveys among local residents and entrepreneurs (Oberholzer et al 2010;Saayman, Saayman 2006). Any comprehensive assessment also requires data to be obtained from national parks' managing bodies, as well as secondary data from public statistics.…”