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John Shores, Consultant, USA
"The actors and policy framework for sustainable tourism is
constantly changing... What is the optimal niche for each NGO
type ... so that the evolution of the whole be steered towards
sustainability?"
Salum A. Madoweka, NGO Chairperson, Tanzania
"We have provided technical help in the mountain communities
of Nogutu and Ruvuma village in the morningside areas to start
Eco- Tourism projects which are running well."
Alessandro D'Agostino, Tour Operator, Honduras
"All my efforts to cooperate with NGOs, have been unsuccessful...
What is missing from working together with mutual benefits?"
Douglas Trent, Tour Operator / NGO Founder,
USA / Brazil
"I created the Focus Conservation Fund when I realized that
I could do more with a non-profit to save biodiversity than
I would ever be able to do with my tour profits"
Jennifer Morfin, Coordinator of NGOs, Mexico
"IMAC's mission is to help Mexican organizations to link with
each other to conserve nature through intra and inter-institutional
learning"
Sven Zoerner, NGO Director, Honduras / Germany
"Part of our project is to create awareness and to create conditions,where
nature conservation can become a major interest for investors
in tourism business.How profitable can sustainability be?"
Sergio Salazar Salvati, Tourism Program Director
of NGO, Brazil
"WWF-Brazil works with tourism where there are threats to the
environmental conservation of a region, or where its implementation
may help in the search for better environmental and social conditions."
Jacqui Knight, NGO CEO, New Zealand
"It seems like the Ministry for the Environment doesn't see
the need to encourage business excellence, and the Conservation
Department doesn't think about people getting into the business
of conservation - and I haven't got onto the subject of the
Tourism Department yet!"
Richard Tuck, Non-Profit Tour Operator, Nicaragua
" I think that MEDA (international NGO) and the Conservation
NGOs (local) with which we are working, provide needed services
that Government cannot or will not provide, because of lack
of money, corruption, lack of effort, lack of resources, lack
of information, etc. ... (There must be) a way to form a virtual
group where people like Mr. Trent can "be able to help communities"
through free consultancy work"
Diego Andrade, Director of Ecotourism Association,
Ecuador
"Few of the (NGO) coordinators understand how the tourism industry
works.. On the other hand, the tour operators don't have a conscience
... There is a divorce between tour operators and community-
based ecotourism projects."
Walter V. Bishop, NGO Secretary / Tour Operator,
Mexico
"We have been involved in tourism and conservation for some
time and are very worried by the direction alternative tourism
has taken. How much are communities willing to pay or how much
should they pay, for the apparent positive aspects of tourism"
Reng Yu, Tour Operator, Bangladesh
"The larger local NGOs (of which Grameen Bank claims to be the
largest NGO in the world) build 'smart' skyscraper buildings
and engage in common 'business' such as property development,
high interest banking, sweat-shop garments, international communications,
etc. with money collected from poor villagers. To the best of
my knowledge, no NGO in Bangladesh yet have any ecotourism projects
or do they fund any".
Nigel Dudley, Consultant, UK
"A current project with IUCN The World Conservation Union and
Cardiff University is looking at how and if the six IUCN protected
area management categories have been used to help make policy
decisions about protected areas"
Paap Kolar, Adventure Tourism Association
Official, Esthonia
"My latest project was the development of an adventure trail
concept called Safari Park. Since there has been lack of state
and local understanding and support to implement such new idea
on public lands, this project was successfully accomplished
with private financing on private lands with support of NGOs."
Graeme Brown, Aid Agency Worker, Cambodia
"Northeast Cambodia is seen as one of the un-opened areas of
the world and many people want to cash in on the money that
tourists bring...We are desperately searching for resources
(to develop more capacity to manage tourism) as private companies
are approaching both government and communities with sometimes
obviously undesirable proposals. Maybe we need NGOs to go back
to being civil society ... rather than being part of the business
sector?
Fito Steiner, President & Coordinator of various
local and international NGOs, Honduras
"Pico Bonito Foundation operates with an annual budget of 100,000
dollars a years, which is a ridiculous budget to manage the
second largest Park in Honduras, all our employees are underpaid,
and they work weekends, holidays and extra hours to manage the
park, without counting the numerous hours that volunteers put
in the foundation, in Latin America if you are a board member,
you don't get paid, you donate your time, and also money to
the organization...the salaries in Pico Bonito range between
119 dollars a month for a secretary, 239 dollars for an administrator,
359 dollars of a forestry engineer at charge of Forestry Management
and 500 dollars for the executive director"
Angelique Fransen, Indigenous Tourism Association
Officer, Australia
"For Indigenous tourism operators to gain WAITOC's accreditation,
they have to undertake the existing mainstream program together
with WAITOC's program. The main two criteria is that the product
offered is delivered by an Indigenous person and that the content
of the product is authentic and culturally appropriate. One
operator has successfully undergone the whole program to date."
Rodulfo Araujo, Director of Mountaineering
Association, Webmaster, Mexico
"We have lost two high altitude huts in the past two years,
apparently due to inexperienced use of a stove. This is telling
us that the former objective of saving lives in the mountain
is no longer valid, and that we should now save mountains from
crowds of poorly prepared intruders."
Victoria Schlesinger, Travel Writer, USA
"A year ago the (World Wildlife Fund's membership travel) program
contracted with a variety of US-base tour operators to take
members of the organization on domestic and international trips,
a business model used by many non-profit affiliate programs.
I often found working in the travel program frustrating because
furthering ecotourism development seemed to be a tangential
goal at best. Fund raising and cultivating donors were the main
objectives."
Alessandro D'Agostino, Tour Operator, Honduras
" A couple of years ago, I had dinner with a donor. He had came
from USA to evaluate a project and he was telling me about the
poor results he had encountered. As a member of my local NGO,
and as a proud "new" Honduran, I was ashamed. He told me not
to worry too much, that they are accustomed to seeing those
kind of results. Generally about 20% of the donations take form.
The remaining 80% covers the administrative charges in an NGO,
or otherwise gets lost."
Ron Mader, Journalist, Webhost, Mexico / USA
"As a journalist, I've interviewed people who head NGOs around
the world. I've met the some of the finest human beings I know,
and some of the most corrupt. It is difficult it is to generalize
about this niche and the need for evaluation is great...How
do we evaluate the various players working in this field regardless
of their nomenclature?"
Altaf Hussain, NGO Worker / Anthropologist,
Pakistan
"Communities living in the area (Northern Areas of Pakistan)
are economically at the same level just trying to survive they
were 30 years before. Tour operators and hotel owners (outsiders)
are earning a lot of money from tourism and taken out all as
their income."
Carlos Libosada, Academic, Philippines
"I distinctly remember once time, about ten years ago, when
I introduced myself as a tourism officer in an NGO gathering
- somebody stood up, pointed his finger at me, and said, "enemy."
Nowadays, you could hardly get that kind of reaction... But
I have also observed that many local NGOs (at least in the Philippines)
are still in quandary whether to accept profitability as one
of the main outputs in their (ecotourism) projects rather than
the usual social justice and environmental conservation"
Erlet Cater, Academic, NGO Board Member, UK
" I know of at least one (ecotourism) project which is faced
with competition not only from unsustainable operations (and
hence lower operating costs) but also from donor-funded activities
where little or no management costs are passed on to visitors.
Can we argue that the latter is truly sustainable?"
John Shores, Consultant, USA
"NGO's at these different levels will have different purposes,
scopes, functions, and constituencies. How success is evaluated,
and who does the evaluating, will obviously differ. Just as
a for-profit enterprise must satisfy its constituency or go
out of business, an NGO must keeps its constituency happy or
it will fail. In both cases, the long-term constituency is whichever
group or entity is willing to pay the bills."
Jean Mc Neil, NGO Officer, UK
"We began working on tourism because we became increasingly
convinced that tourism was a development issue itself, as well
as how it affects what are traditionally understood as development
issues - economic inequality, individual rights, issues of gender,
race, ethnicity and, of course, politics."
Jerry R. A-Kum, Academic / Consultant, Suriname
/ Guyana
"There have been complaints from local communities that NGO's
are not truly beneficial to them. By which it is meant, that
the level of leakages is extremely high. There is more money
spent for example on getting foreign expertise involved, whilst
at the same time the same experts will utilize local people
for getting the right information."
Carlos Libosada, Academic, Philippines
" Conservation information should be shared, not sold. Why not
make a (sponsored? :>) site available for the NGO's to upload
whatever information they can share."
Ron Mader, Journalist, Webhost, Mexico / USA
"I don't think we need a new initiative. I think we need to
find support (both moral and financial) for the sites that already
focus on this niche."
Graeme Brown, Aid Agency Worker, Cambodia
"I see donors in general being more interested in their visiting
projects and getting out of their offices. As a result, I see
a lack of accountability amongst NGOs. Even when they do good
work generally they do not co-ordinate. They aim to promote
community management but fail to be a coherent community."
Antonis Petropoulos, Director of international
ecotourism club, Greece
"What is the best way, (i.e. without risking legal suits) to
shed light at the financing, the motives and the alliances of
the major NGOs involved in tourism and conservation projects."
Leon Dempers, Travel Director of National
Conservation NGO, South Africa
"(WESSA raises) desperately needed funds for conservation projects
from commission earned by acting as the middleman between ecotourists
and the safari operators or establishments best equipped to
satisfy their specific needs. We do not compete with for-profits
as we are marketing their products into niches which they might
otherwise find difficult to approach."
Eleni Svoronou, Director of Capacity Building
Program, Local branch of International NGO, Greece
Our role then (1991) was to help in the start up of the ecotourism
in the selected protected areas where we worked. Also to help
the local community take over the management of the ecotourism
establishments and services. Our role (today)... is to offer
capacity building on the difficult aspects of ecotourism.
Diane Jukofsky, Director of Communications
& Education Director of International NGO, Costa Rica / USA
We are also strong believers in the important role communications
plays in conservation, and I concur with previous comments that
NGOs need to do a better job at sharing information about their
work.
Miriam Geitz, Tourism Project Officer for
International NGO's Arctic Programme
As we work in eight different countries, approaches change less
over time than from location to location. I think that it is
crucial for an NGO to know what its core competency is - and
stick with it. I think a lot of failures could be avoided if
people would recognize that despite their knowledge about tourism,
their real expertise is conservation."
Graeme Brown, Aid Agency Worker, Cambodia
(In Ratanakiri in Northeast Cambodia)...A lot relies on big
money and maybe there needs to be a lot more focus on civil
society so that, when the international agencies are leaving,
civil society can moderate government. We need someone to be
taxing the hell out of tourism in general then re-directing
the funds to efficient NGOs (and government agencies) with a
capacity building and social role ... in perpetuity.
Rodulfo Araujo, Director of a Mountaineering
Association & Webmaster, Mexico
Why don't many NGOs in Mexico cover tourism and conservation?
Because NGOs governing tourism are made by tourism operators
themselves. Most have concluded that this is not the gold mine
they once believed it was going to be. Conservation does not
rank high in the survival list.
Douglas B. Trent, Tour Operator / NGO Founder
& Director, USA / Brazil
"We have a long history of providing significant financial assistance
... Nonetheless, in Focus Tours, as well as in other tour operators
that are not community-based, an average of around 80%, I would
guess, of the profits end up with the tour operator. If it didn't,
the tour operator would probably go out of business. The tour
operator has significant costs to be paid with that approximately
80%. The second largest amount of profit, roughly 18%, goes
to the city where the tour participants start their tour. This
leaves, of course, around 2% in the hands of the local community,
if there is one."
John Shores, Consultant, USA
As rural tourism of all sorts becomes more common, I envision
that development NGO's will become the promoters of community-based
tourism. The conservation NGO's can then step back and resume
their conventional role as advocates for conservation. ...it
strikes me as more than a bit ironic that a group that should
be promoting empowerment at the local level is creating this
behemoth of an organization that tries to do everything.
Ron Mader, Journalist, Webhost, Mexico / USA
If we wish to see environmental conservation and local development
succeed, we need to be diligent in our fact-checking. That's
easily said ... but who funds independent evaluation of conservation
projects or tourism projects?
Angeles Mendoza, Academic Researcher in Protected
Area Management, Canada / Mexico
Through my experience in adventure sports and outdoor recreation
in the past ten years, in both, Mexico and Canada, I have seen
a spectrum of attitudes in the relationship among NGOs in environment
and conservation. Two aspects where there is room for improvement
are the evaluation of environmental impacts and performance
evaluation.
Victoria Mailhos Auersperg, Farmer, Co-founder
of Rural Tourism Association, Uruguay
In those 15 years of evolution, I heard about everything: people
who aren't in the business and know everything, politicians
who don't understand us and just before elections want to do
something with us, but they don't pay attention to our demands;
lots of consultants who know exactly what we need, and want
to assess us, but we are who have to pay to the banks all the
money they say we have to ask (including their salary) without
assuring us the revenues ... I see each farm as a little National
Park or reserve, but receiving little practical help from the
government. I like very much the term NGI (Non Governmental
Individual) referred by Ron. I personally feel like a NGI because
everybody in my association waits for what I do.
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