Community Adaptation

From week 11 lecture, the case study presented on Bang Khuan Thian (BKT) Bangkok, Thailand community adaptation measures have been largely dependent on community participation. However, in order to sustain the region of BKT, financial support from a larger system is needed to increase and improve ecological conservation. The community needs to diversify economic activities, besides aqua culture, to maintain economic livelihood. As well, the changing perspective of youths, who may not place as high a value on traditional economic economy of aquaculture will be less committed to community-based projects such as planting mangroves and building bamboo dykes. Therefore, I believe BKT can introduce eco-tourism as a community adaptation measure to generate economic revenue to sustain the community and the physical environment.

Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve (JBR) in Sichuan Province is a case study of how eco-tourism can be introduced as a successful measure of community adaptation. JBR is similar to BKT, in that before eco-tourism was introduced, its economy was highly dependent on agriculture and grazing with limited source of income and the community was living an impoverished life. Eco-tourism was introduced into the region and the local income dramatically increased by 188% per capita in a span of 10 years. Not only did the community’s income per capita increased, it provided more diverse job opportunities for individuals and it decreases their dependence on agriculture. In turn, interviews conducted with local residents have responded that that their natural landscape improved due to villagers ceasing their agricultural activities due to revenues and benefits from the tourism industry. This shift from agricultural dependence to tourism has helped to improve the sustainability of JBR community as it is less vulnerable to resource depletion, provided a platform for economic revenue and brought awareness and importance to the community about ecological conservation.

In addition, I believe eco-tourism can promote the economic value of BKT at a governmental level. This will bring awareness to the national government to contribute resources towards ecological conservation and sustainability of BKT because of its value.

Reference 

Case Study of Jiu Zhaigou Biosphere Reserve in Sichuan Province (Chapter 5, p. 92 - 107)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/52891038/Ecotourism-and-environmental-sustainability