Think Tanzania and you may imagine yourself in the plains of the
Serengeti or the peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro. This week I was in Ruaha
National Park, the second largest national park in all of Africa, but
merely a blip on the tourist map. It is not just geographically large
but ecologically rich and mega diverse – it has more than 1,400 species
of plants and is home to abundant iconic wildlife species. Compare the
tourism traffic: while Serengeti has 300,000 visitors annually, Ruaha
has only 20,000 per year. Despite its share of nature’s bounty, Ruaha
symbolizes a missed opportunity to be an engine of growth for Tanzania.
By building an effective sustainable tourism policy, this reality could
change fairly quickly.
Like several other countries in Africa,
the link between tourism and economic growth is fairly obvious here.
Tanzania’s tourism industry comprises 13 percent of the country’s GDP
and is responsible for 400,000 jobs. Tourism spurs investment and
business in the transport, agriculture, food, retail, financial services
and construction sectors, offering compelling opportunities for poverty
reduction in a country where 39 percent of the population lives under
$1.25 a day. As the largest export earner, tourism also underpins the
exchange rate, which makes much else in the economy possible. But there
is scope to further leverage the sector to create jobs and attack
poverty head on.
It is not surprising that promoting tourism has
been on the agenda of the President himself and the National Business
Council. The challenge is how to use nature-based tourism as a driver of
growth, without eroding the asset base that the tourists are attracted
to. This came up in several of my discussions with the government of
Tanzania.
The country, almost uniquely, has managed to find that
sweet spot – `high value -- low volume’ tourism. In other words, it
earns more money per tourist than any other country in the region.
However tourism is concentrated in the Northern circuit of Mount
Kilimanjaro and Serengeti, areas which have come under multiple stresses
including over-stretched infrastructure and poaching. With these areas
approaching their `carrying capacity’, the government is looking
elsewhere.
One option is turning southwards and developing Ruaha.
The question is will tourists travel the 600-odd miles from
Dar-Es-Salaam to be in Ruaha and its adjoining parks like Selous,
Katavi, Mahale and Kitulo? And what will it do for the communities
living there?
Nature-based tourism needs to work for the roughly 39 percent of the population that lives on less than $1.25/day in Tanzania
Nature-based tourism needs to work for the roughly 39 percent of the population that lives on less than $1.25/day in Tanzania
For now, in Ruaha national park, things are not going that well. The
Ruaha river originates in the Usangu highlands and flows through Ruaha
park to feed two hydropower plants that generate more than half of the
country’s electricity. In the last few years, irrigated areas upstream
for rice have increased more than tenfold. The result is that the once
perennial river is dry for several months.
The river’s health has
far-reaching impacts on the plants’ ability to generate power and on
the ecology of the park. One indicator of the ecological stress is the
decline in wildlife population. Elephant population has declined by 36.5
percent between 2009 and 2013, signaling the distress in the local
community where ivory and skins of wild animals have become more
attractive than living, wild animals. Tanzania recently joined a task
force together with the United States, China, Germany, European Union,
World Bank and the United Nations Development Programs (UNDP) to control
and curb illegal poaching, trafficking and export of ivory in the
region.
Any development strategy will have to manage trade-offs
and competing uses between rice farmers, the hydroelectric needs and
sustaining the wildlife population, so critical to tourism.
The
second question on my mind is how to make sure tourism benefits the
local communities that live close to natural wonders. While in several
other countries, tourism has provided income as well as jobs to local
communities, the benefits do not seem to be percolating in Tanzania.
Currently, these ecologically rich areas are magnets of poverty rather
than hubs of economic progress.
There are examples of good
tourism policies that lift the lives of communities while focusing on
conservation. The World Bank has been working with several partners in
Mozambique for over a decade on conservation with a special focus on
community development to ensure benefits flow from tourism activities to
the communities.
In Namibia, Community Business Ventures
between the private tour operators and the community have worked well.
Pieces of community-reserved land are subleased to private tourism
investors in return for direct payment to village governments. Costa
Rica is a leader in showing the world how to grow tourism at a rate of
14 percent annually for the last decade while keeping the natural asset
base intact. The country’s rich ecosystems attract more than 2 million
tourists annually, contributing nearly 13 percent to the GDP and
reducing poverty levels. The World Bank has been working with Costa Rica
to design economic incentives for the conservation of biodiversity.
The challenges at Ruaha are worth resolving – not only because it is
home to 10 percent of the world’s shrinking lion population, but because
nature-based tourism can act as a catalyst for meeting the country’s
development needs. It is a reminder that the same assets that support
tourism also need to serve the poorest who depend on nature for their
survival.
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