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How Ecotourism Affects Human Communities

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Ecotourism’s Promise and Peril

Abstract

This chapter examines the contribution of ecotourism to the improvement of communities’ livelihoods by providing the theoretical background and some experiences from around the world. First, we explore the role of ecotourism in empowering local people and improving resource stewardship and the role of ecotourism in influencing policy and decision-making toward biodiversity conservation. Second, we discuss the direct and indirect economic benefits of ecotourism to local communities and the role of ecotourism in educating and raising awareness toward conservation of natural resources. Finally, we discuss these issues considering the North-South debate, attempting to understand how different roles of ecotourism differ from community to community, from country to country, and from region to region. We demonstrate that there are different perspectives of ecotourism and what is meant by ecotourism in the South differs from the Northern perspective, with direct implications to how management is applied and biological impacts minimized.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia e Evolução and Conservation Biogeography Lab, Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil

    Daniel Zacarias

  2. Programa de Graduação Ciência para Desenvolvimento (PGCD), Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal

    Daniel Zacarias

  3. Universidade Eduardo Mondlane/Escola Superior de Hotelaria e Turismo de Inhambane, Maputo, Mozambique

    Daniel Zacarias

  4. Conservation Biogeography Lab, Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil

    Rafael Loyola

  5. Centro Nacional de Conservação da Flora, Instituto de Pesquisas Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Rafael Loyola

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  1. Daniel Zacarias
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Correspondence to Rafael Loyola .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and The Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Daniel T. Blumstein

  2. Ifremer, UMR MARBEC, Marine Biodiversity, Exploitation and Conservation, Laboratory of Adaptation and Adaptability of Animals and Systems, Palavas-les-Flots, France

    Benjamin Geffroy

  3. Department of Ecology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Diogo S. M. Samia

  4. Graduate Program in Ecology, and Life and Earth Sciences Department, University of Brasília, Brasilia, Brazil

    Eduardo Bessa

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Zacarias, D., Loyola, R. (2017). How Ecotourism Affects Human Communities. In: Blumstein, D., Geffroy, B., Samia, D., Bessa, E. (eds) Ecotourism’s Promise and Peril. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58331-0_9

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