Nourishing the Future for All
As part of our time in South Africa, we not only visited national parks, but we also had the opportunity to visit an ecotourism establishment called Nourish. With ecotourism becoming a growing sector for one of the largest industries in the world, tourism, I began to wonder what is ecotourism's effect on the local communities and how does it impact Kruger National Park? When we were visiting Nourish the founder Sarah was telling us all the things Nourish does for the local communities. Nourish provides a day care, tutoring services, community gardens, and visual representation of how natives can use today’s garbage as a way to make more eco-friendly building decisions. Above is a photo I snapped while playing with some young children on the playground. When we approached the daycare to play with the children outside, we got to see first hand how these children were growing up. Most of them did not have shoes, and many looked as if they were wearing hand me down clothes. But despite the appearance, the children were happy and well taken care of at Nourish, they had supervision, food, and transportation to and from day care. These children were receiving care that without Nourish, they would not have gotten at home. In a paper written by Regina Scheyvens, she talks about the need for an approach to ecotourism which starts from the needs, concerns, and welfare of local host communities. Scheyvens concludes her paper with the statement, “The rationale behind the framework is that ecotourism should promote both conservation and development at the local level”. This conclusion is what makes the development of the nonprofit Nourish so important. Nourish strives to connect conservation issues and community issues, believing that you can fight poaching through fighting poverty. The goal of Nourish is to bring tourism to the local areas to bring income and opportunities at the local level. With helping raise the youth in the local communities, Nourish is helping to raise potential youth that will say no to poaching. Nourish is in its early stages of development with many new projects underway that will help benefit the local communities. Ecotourism, if done with conservation in mind, can help lift communities out of poverty. Kruger National Park is an area protected by South Africa including all the animals that reside in it. While in Kruger, the main thing to do there is to go on safaris. Ecotourism is a huge part of Kruger National Park because Ecotourism has the potential to provide a powerful economic incentive for biodiversity conservation. Many visitors who come to Kruger National Park are going to find the big 5, and more experienced visitors prefer more diverse view areas. Ecotourism is the main driver for Kruger National Park, and with more people wanting more diversity at view sites, conservation becomes even more important. In order to preserve species diversity, proper practices must happen to keep species out of extinction. Ecotourism has the potential to create incentives for management teams to keep species diversity, meaning the role of conservation in ecotourism is not to be limited by narrow tourist preferences of certain animals. If more ecotourism locations like Nourish existed around Kruger and private reserves, conservation and local communities could both benefit greatly.
Work Cited
Lindsey, P. A., Alexander, R., Mills, M. G. L., Romañach, S., & Woodroffe, R. (2007). Wildlife viewing preferences of visitors to protected areas in South Africa: implications for the role of ecotourism in conservation. Journal of Ecotourism, 6(1), 19–33.
Scheyvens, R. (1999). Ecotourism and the empowerment of local communities. Tourism management, 20(2), 245–249.
