In this blog, I would like to share my experiences from places that I have visited and I have been involved with. I hope to continue sharing with you more experiences as I travel and hope that you will share yours too.
A Short Introduction:
My involvement with ecotourism began in 1995 when I became the South Asia coordinator for the USAID supported Biodiversity Conservation Network.
The project was designed to promote an enterprise-based approach to conservation, the premise being that if local communities are given a financial incentive, then they will be willing partners in conservation. Ecotourism was viewed as a low-impact enterprise based on natural resources. Each project had three basic tenets to follow. The enterprise had to enhance biodiversity in the area or at least ensure that biodiversity is not degrading; the enterprise should bring livelihood benefits to the local communities, the benefits should be equitably distributed and finally the business itself should be viable. This meant that there was an intensive monitoring component in each project and the organisations involved were selected on the basis of their ability to do so.
Thus began my journey on the ecotourism tract and my exposure started with two projects in the region that have gone on to become pioneering initiatives in this field. One was a project in the buffer zone of the Chitwan National Park in Nepal and the other focussing on the Yuksam-Dzongri- Goecha La trekking trail in the Indian state of Sikkim. ...
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