Tourism leads to wealth but increased vulnerability: a double-edged sword in Lijiang, South-West China

Su, Yufang; Hammond, J. J.; Villamor, Grace B.; Grumbine, R. Edward; Xu, Jianchu; Hyde, Kevin D.; Pagella, Tim; Sujakhu, Nani Maiya; Ma, Xianyong

doi:10.1080/02508060.2016.1179523

Cited by 16 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…For instance, while in a Service Oriented strategy a reduction of the tourist flow may be strongly perceived by the household, in a Mixed strategy the income reduction can be buffered by the goods obtained on other activities. In general, these results agree with studies that suggest that economic diversification helps rural households reduce poverty and vulnerability (Ellis, 2008; Martin and Lorenzen, 2016; Thulstrup, 2015) and studies that document the greater vulnerability of tourism specialization (Tao and Wall, 2009; Su et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Multiple resource use strategies confer resilience to the socio-ecosystem in a protected area in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

Jácome

Garcı́a-Frapolli²,

Bonilla‐Moheno

et al. 2020

Preprint

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2Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) are the main biodiversity conservation strategy in Mexico. 3 Generally, NPAs are established on the territories of indigenous and rural groups driving 4 important changes in their local resource management practices. In this paper we study the 5 case of Otoch Ma'ax Yetel Kooh, an NPA in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, that has been 6 studied in a multidisciplinary way for more than twenty years. This reserve and its buffer zone 7 is homeland to Yucatec Mayan communities that until recently used to manage their resources 8 following a multiple use strategy (MUS), which involves local agricultural practices and has been 9 proposed as resilience-enhancing mechanism. However, due to the restrictions imposed by the 10 decree of the reserve and the growth of tourism in the region, some of these communities have 11 started to abandon the MUS and specialize on tourism-related activities. We build a dynamical 12 computational model to explore the effects of some of these changes on the capacity of this NPA 13 to conserve the biodiversity and on the resilience of households to some frequent disturbances in 14 the region. The model, through the incorporation of agent-based and boolean network modelling, 15 explores the interaction between the forest, the monkey population and some productive activities 16 done by the households (milpa agriculture, ecotourism, agriculture, charcoal production). We 17 calibrated the model, explored its sensibility, compared it with empirical data and simulated 18 different management scenarios. Our results suggest that those management strategies that 19 1 do not exclude traditional activities may be compatible with conservation objectives, supporting 20 previous studies. Also, our results support the hypothesis that the MUS, throughout a balanced 21 integration of traditional and alternative activities, is a mechanism to enhance household resilience 22 in terms of income and food availability, as it reduces variability and increases the resistance to 23 some disturbances. Our study, in addition to highlighting the importance of local management 24 practices for resilience, also illustrates how computational modeling and systems perspective are 25 effective means of integrating and synthesizing information from different sources. 26 27 agent-based model, boolean network, resilience 28 1 INTRODUCTION Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) are one of the main conservation strategies in the world to face 29 biodiversity loss. In 2016, 14.7% of terrestrial and inland water ecosystems worldwide were under this 30 type of protection (UNEP -WCMC and IUCN, 2016). This strategy, however, has been highly controversial 31 for their impact on the rural communities that inhabit the protected territories, namely, on their forms of 32 resource management and appropriation (Durand and Jímenez, 2010; García-Frapolli, 2015). Nowadays, 33 conservation strategies in NPAs range from total exclusion of human activities, to the promotion of the 34 sustainable use of the territory (Br...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Multiple resource use strategies confer resilience to the socio-ecosystem in a protected area in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

Jácome

Garcı́a-Frapolli²,

Bonilla‐Moheno

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…While rapid urban growth, a lack of planning, poor governance and corruption emerged as the key immediate causes of Labuan's water scarcity, neoliberal development lies at the base. Tourism is the development discourse and as in other places, water is taken out of agriculture to use for higher marginal economic returns (Ahlers and Zwarteveen 2009;Su et al 2016). Furthermore, the use of water for tourism exacerbates the town's water scarcity and increases its cost, with the poorest paying the most per litre and being "most vulnerable to the vagaries of water vendors" (Loftus 2009).…”

Section: Water Access and Tourismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some years ago I noted that "despite access to water being a key indicator of progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the intensification of global concerns over water access and availability and the increasing importance of tourism in developing countries, there has been remarkably little academic research into the link between tourism and the impact of water scarcity on destination populations" (Cole 2012(Cole :1223. This remains the case, although Su et al (2016) have made a useful contribution with their study from Lijiang, China.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water worries: An intersectional feminist political ecology of tourism and water in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia

Cole

2017

Annals of Tourism Research

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Framed in feminist political ecology, this paper presents an intersectional analysis of the genderwater-tourism nexus. Based in an emergent tourism destination, Labuan Bajo, Indonesia, it goes beyond an analysis of how women bear the brunt of burdens related to water scarcity, and examines which women and why and how it affects their daily lives. Based on ethnographic research and speaking to over 100 respondents, the analysis unpicks how patriarchal cultural norms, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, life-stage and proximity to water sources are intertwined to (re)produce gendered power relations. While there is heterogeneity of lived experiences, in the most part tourism is out competing locals for access to water leading to women suffering in multiple ways.

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“…The Jinsha River and Yalong River are both major tributaries of the Yangtze River, which involves 98% of Lijiang's drainage area. Only 1.9% locates within the Lancang River drainage area, see the map adapted from [31].…”

Section: Natural Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Did the Lost Shangri-La Get Lost? The Tragedy of the Groundwater Commons in Lijiang, China

Yan

2020

Water

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Groundwater is critical to human survival, however, it has constantly been overexploited around the world. Despite hydrological causes and the effects of global climate change, groundwater governance has an essential role to play in causing or preventing such overexploitation. This paper presented a case of groundwater governance in Lijiang, renowned for its natural beauty and exotic cultures, located in northwest Yunnan, China. Since being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in the 1990s, Lijiang has experienced dramatic tourism development, which eventually escalated its groundwater crisis. This paper applied the diagnostic approach of social-ecological systems to analyse the institutionalised governance process in the case of Lijiang and substantiated the effectiveness of the Social-Ecological Systems (SES) approach in explaining groundwater management issues. Two significant findings were drawn in the case of Lijiang. First, institutional arrangements may play an essential role in resource management, but their analysis is lacking between macro modelling of planetary boundaries of the Earth and micro surveys of individual and community behaviour. The SES framework offered a useful tool to fill this gap. Second, the designation of Lijiang’s Outstanding Universal Values as a world heritage site ironically damaged its local cultural intimacy, which nurtured generations of collective action for Naxi people, escalating the tragedy of its groundwater commons.

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Tourism leads to wealth but increased vulnerability: a double-edged sword in Lijiang, South-West China

Cited by 16 publications

References 33 publications

Multiple resource use strategies confer resilience to the socio-ecosystem in a protected area in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

Multiple resource use strategies confer resilience to the socio-ecosystem in a protected area in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

Water worries: An intersectional feminist political ecology of tourism and water in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia

How Did the Lost Shangri-La Get Lost? The Tragedy of the Groundwater Commons in Lijiang, China

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