Department of Tourism and Recreation

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://10.10.97.169:4000/handle/123456789/976

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Browsing Department of Tourism and Recreation by Subject "Climate change"

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    Effects of drought on cultural tourism: selected cases of Maasai tourism groups surrounding Tarangire National Park in Tanzania
    (Taylor & Francis (Routledge), Journal of Tourism & Cultural Change, 2016-11-11) Lwoga, N. B.; Asubisye, E.
    This study explores the effect of drought on cultural tourism by applying the case study approach using the Maasai women’s groups surrounding Tarangire National Park (TNP) in Tanzania. Semi-structured interviews and observations were used to collect data from 30 purposefully selected Maasai women and 30 tourists. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings show that drought affects tourism both positively and negatively. Positively, drought forges unity among individuals, and creates the community’s external links that are crucial for tourism development. Negatively, drought interferes with the development and delivery of tourist products, thus destroying their quality and service delivery. Despite the challenges tourism faces during times of drought, including the scarcity of raw materials for making cultural products, 50% of the respondents would rather continue with tourism as a strategy to curb the effect of drought than their traditional livelihoods. Theoretically, the study shows the importance of the cultural ecology and livelihood lenses in investigating the effects of drought on tourism in a cultural setting. Practical recommendations for tourism authorities and stakeholders, as well as areas for future research, are provided.
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    Sustainable wildlife tourism in the context of climate change: the case study of Ngorongoro conservation area, Tanzania
    (Victoria University Melbourne, Australia, 2014-04) Mkiramweni, Nickson Peter
    Attaining sustainability of wildlife tourism has been a challenge in a world of uncertainty. This is even more so when the world’s climate is rapidly changing. Scientific evidence suggests that climate change will continue and escalate into the future. All sectors of the economy, including tourism, will be impacted by climate change. Both the human and environmental systems of tourism will suffer the consequences of climate change. Wildlife tourism is one of the tourism subsectors, representing a strong interconnectedness between human and environmental systems, recognised as being vulnerable to climate change. Thus, reducing vulnerability is inevitable if wildlife tourism is to grow sustainably. Adaptation is one of the two mechanisms for dealing with the consequences of climate change. Wildlife tourism needs to adapt to climate change for it to grow sustainably. Despite this recognition, very little research has been undertaken on how wildlife tourism worldwide can adapt to climate change. As a result, the contribution of research on how wildlife tourism can be sustained has remained elusive. A common feature is the lack of an effective framework for addressing climate change adaptation in wildlife tourism. A review of existing climate change adaptation frameworks found that none of them focused on wildlife tourism destinations. This thesis proposes a conceptual Wildlife Tourism Climate Change Adaptation Framework (WTCCAF) to assist wildlife tourism to adapt to climate change. Three steps were adopted to develop such a framework. The first step involved reviewing existing climate change adaptation frameworks for tourism more generally. This review was done in order to understand the context and scope from which these frameworks can be undertaken. Because attaining sustainable wildlife tourism has been a major and urgent issue for wildlife tourism practitioners; the review of literature on climate change adaptation was preceded by the review of sustainable wildlife tourism development frameworks. This was deemed important to develop a theoretical sustainability base against which the review of climate change adaptation frameworks could be evaluated. The outcome of this review was the development of a theoretical climate change adaptation framework grounded in sustainable wildlife tourism development theories. The second step involved testing the newly developed framework in the field. The formulated framework adopted the following terminologies: shocks and stressors and exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity frequently used in climate change studies. In this thesis these terminologies are used as key themes for assessing the vulnerability of wildlife tourism. Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) was selected as a case study for testing the developed framework. The purpose of this test was to understand the factors that heighten the vulnerability of NCA to climate change. This in turn helped to adjust the developed theoretical framework to reflect what was happening on the ground in the field. Primary data were collected from key practitioners of NCA wildlife tourism system including conservationists, tourism businesses and local community. The methods of data collection include in-depth interviews and focus group discussions supplemented with informal conversations and observations. Overall, 86 practitioners participated in this research. The third step involved the development of a conceptual climate change adaptation framework (i.e. WTCCAF) based on key findings of this study. The intention of this framework is to provide wildlife tourism practitioners with a tool to guide them in developing climate change adaption interventions. Thus this framework makes a contribution to the fields of wildlife tourism and conservation, particularly when climate change is acknowledged as a major threat to the sustainability of wildlife tourism. This thesis however recommends that because not every climate related issue was captured in this study, further research is deemed necessary.