Community-based tourism's contribution towards conservation in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park
Résumé
Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park (VNP) is sited in the Virunga Mountains, one of the most important regions for biodiversity conservation in Africa. We introduced community-based tourism entrepreneurship working with communities around the village of Nyakinama. We work closely with women and youth cooperatives, integrating their views and wishes through participatory planning meetings. We facilitate the access to market, enabling cooperatives to reach international tourists with their handicraft products and cultural activities. Environmental programmes, linked to tourism products have positive impacts on biodiversity.
Our community-based tourism activities support conservation in VNP. Our model helped in diversifying livelihoods and reduced forest resources dependency. Our community-based tourism programme has a high pro-poor impact, enabling the local community to be included in the tourism value chain, increase their economic status, thus allowing them to spearhead conservation in the Volcanoes National Park.
Classifications
Région
Ampleur de la mise en œuvre
Ecosystème
Thème
Conservation des espèces et interventions axées sur l’approche « Une seule santé »
Gestion des risques urbains et de catastrophes
Défis
Objectifs de développement durable
Autres cibles
Approches pour l’engagement des entreprises
Soumission (I)NDC
Défis
- High human population densities surrounding the park which reach as high as 1000 inhabitants per km2 in some areas.
- Food insecurity is a driver of dependency on forest resources, with poor households supplementing their subsistence livelihoods by harvesting water, bushmeat, medicinal plants, bamboo and fuel wood from the park.
- Wild honey gathering in the forest has also caused devastating accidental forest fires.
- Land is the primary economic asset and 90% of rural people in the region rely on subsistence farming with very few off-farm activities.
- Population growth due to the region's high fertility and the struggle for available resources and land are driving encroachment on the park’s edge.
Bénéficiaires
- Single mothers
- Local artisans (40)
- Youth
- Vulnerable families (90)
Comment les blocs constitutifs interagissent-ils entre eux dans la solution?
Our approach to community engagement in VNP is distinctly bottom-up in nature. Much of the community development activities around VNP are infrastructure investments that create indirect benefits to the community. Indirect benefits are typically linked to conservation and do not prioritise the needs of those closest to the park. We established community cooperatives to run the cultural activities, provide a venue for marketing the activities as a product to tourists. Collectively, we work with over 300 vulnerable women across 5 cooperatives in an area of high rural poverty around the village of Nyakinama, 8km south of Musanze. Most of the women lacked formal education, majority being widows or single parents. Thanks to the initiative of baskets weaving that are sold to the tourists, those vulnerable women can earn a living.
Impacts
We promote environmental sustainability and inclusively through projects that are culturally appropriate.
- More than 100 women participate in our tree planting activities
- Created jobs and opportunities for 120 artisans and craftspeople, performers and entertainers, lodgings, dining establishments, crafts supply stores; trained more than 35 youth to work in our campsite as local guides; and supported 25 local artists to engage in producing artistic materials speaking about the urge to conserve the environment.
- Established local traditional dancing troop composed of 25 women and 5 men who do the drumming for the tourists.
- We involved more than 200 women to work in making eco-friendly banana seed bags, to replace plastic bags, which also contribute to soil conservation.
- The Establishment of Red Rocks botanical garden prevented the locals from entering the park in search of medicinal plants
- Beekeeping activity which is promoted outside the park provides income to the locals by selling natural honey to the tourists and nearby lodges/hotels thus gaining some income
Histoire
We committed to working in partnership with local people, environmental protection and sustainable development. Our mission statement is to support training, capacity building, environmental protection, nature conservation, and promotion of good practice and the preservation of cultural heritage; describing us as to work with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation and social justice and development that is community-based and sustainable, focused especially on the needs of the vulnerable.
Marie Louise joined Red Rocks 10 years ago, she is skilled in showcasing how pottery-making is made, once with us she learned how to drum and joined the local cultural dancing troop. She is a single mother of 4 children, her husband died during the atrocities which befallen our country in 1994. She used to be accommodated by well-wishers and supported by social organisation to educate and cater for children but from the income she got from the cultural activities offered at our red rocks, she managed to build her own house and currently she is able to pay for medical insurance for her kids and also manages to pay for the school fees and other needs for her family. It is in this regards that she quoted that Red Rocks has helped her by bringing her together with other single mothers with whom she made friends and shared their experiences on how to engage in tourism activities thus making them connect with foreigners. We gave them an area where they will be selling their products. Initially, she joined Red Rocks when we only had 1 cooperative but now the number has grown and they are happy to share skills and income generated.
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