Tourist Agroforestry Landscape from the Perception of Local Communities: A Case Study of Rwenzori, Uganda

Abstract

The Bakonjo have long practiced an agroforestry system of cultivation on the Ugandan slopes of the Rwenzori Mountain range. All terrain above 1600–2200 m has been strictly protected for many years because it is part of a national park. As a trade-off, the landscapes outside the park have been largely deforested. In the meantime, tourist numbers have increased. In Ruboni, a village of 1200 people, the closest to the eastern gate of the park, we interviewed a random sample of 51 residents aged >14 to understand how they perceived the landscape, park and tourism. Cultivated features were not essential to describe the place of residence, in contrast to natural features and human engineered devices. Cultivated and natural elements were judged as beautiful. Even if the inhabitants did not like human engineered facilities, they welcomed their improvement. The origin of native and non-native plants was not consistently recognized. These results show that the inhabitants feel affection for the agroforestry pattern of the Rwenzori landscape. However, ecological, social and economic pressures are challenging land use sustainability. This would be better addressed by an integrated pattern of land governance than the current two models: strict protection inside the park and relaxed land use outside.

Pastoralism and Tourism in Eastern Africa—Quantitative Analysis from 2004 to 2018

“…The other sector that may benefit from pastoralism is tourism: pastoralism can provide cultural attractions to tourists by the traditions, customs, food, and typical lifestyle, and it also provides important ecosystem services, which are important for nature-based tourism. This is similar to findings in [31][32][33][34][35][36] for specific countries. Our research shows that a larger pastoralist value added to tourism, to agriculture, and to GDP correlate with higher international tourism receipts, though not with international tourist arrivals.…”

“…East Africa is one of the major tourism destinations in Africa, and natural resources are among its most important tourism appeals [14,30]. However, local communities rarely benefit much from living in the most attractive nature-based destinations, although host communities play a crucial role in the sustainable management of these areas [25,[31][32][33]. As wildlife has been an important attraction to tourists in the continent, local rural communities may consider the option of contributing to nature-based or wildlife tourism through their agricultural activities [33][34][35][36][37][38][39].…”

Sustainable Tourism in Protected Area—A Case of Fruška Gora National Park, Vojvodina (Northern Serbia)

“…This could serve the authors in future research on the attitudes and satisfaction of visitors to the Fruška Gora National Park in order to define particular measures to improve the sustainable tourism development [67,68]. If we analyzed the currently obtained values by researching the four dimensions of sustainability, it could be seen that for residents and visitors of this protected area, the most important were those tourist activities and items of ecological and sociocultural sustainability [69] that also contributed to the greatest satisfaction.…”

Impact of Ecological Conservation Policy of Landscape Resources on the Behavior Intention of Stakeholders in Shennongjia National Park

“…In the process of the formation and development of national parks, developed countries have been paying close attention to the impact of resource protection and development on indigenous people. The research mainly focuses on aborigines' perception of various national park policies, such as the impact of recreation resources on aborigines and tourists [4], or aborigines' satisfaction with landscape resource development activities, and focuses on the resource allocation and well-being realization of relevant interest groups in the process of landscape resource protection and development [5][6][7], makes full use of local traditional materials, and explores sustainable development methods that adapt to various resources [8,9], such as research on how to balance the relationship between ecological protection, ecotourism and sustainable development, and how to reconcile human-land conflicts through cooperation, and on biodiversity protection, demands and well-being of relevant interest groups [10,11]; In the conservation of national park resources, advocating intergenerational equity and promote environmental harmony by increasing intergenerational interaction [12]; With the impact of global climate change, the role of national parks in improving the ecological environment has become increasingly prominent. More and more studies have begun to explore the views of local communities in national parks on landscape change, ecosystem services, climate change and livelihoods [13];…”