Conservation tourism: The way forward for Sri Lanka

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce with the initiation of the John Keells Foundation and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently conducted a two-day conference under the theme of ‘Sustainable Biodiversity and Economic Development’ yesterday.

From left: World Bank Lead Environmental Specialist Sumith Pilapitiya, Sri Lanka Tourism Director of Standard Quality Assurance Upali Ratnayake, EU – SWITCH Asia Greening Hotel Project Director Srilal Miththapala,  SLAITO Director Nishad Wijetunge and compere Arun Dias Bandaranaike at the two-day conference themed ‘Sustainable Biodiversity and Economic Development’

The first of its kind, the forum looked to highlight the importance of sustainable development and conservation tourism in order for both the Government and the private sector to make a larger contribution to the environment.

The forum addressed many issues through five sessions on Day One, covering a range of topics from tourism and biodiversity to preserving biological terrestrial heritage and Day Two featured yet another five sessions.

The keynote address was delivered by the Lead Environmental Specialist at the World Bank, Sumith Pilapitiya, who spoke on sustainable biodiversity and its economic value. Hailing the forum as a timely and important seminar, he pointed out that it was particularly important in this phase of Sri Lanka’s accelerated development today as one needs to look at the long-term consequences during such development.

The global scenario today is that the world’s biological diversity is under severe threat and future extinction rates will be 10 times higher. It is a crisis because it is crucial to human wellbeing. The economic value of ecosystem services comes up to approximately 33 trillion dollars a year, a figure which is double the global GNP.

“I am disappointed that we couldn’t get high level Government participation in such events. They are doing it in the name of short-term economic development, but we are looking for sustainable development, not short-term,” he stated.

Sustainable development looks beyond the private costs and benefits of the immediate user of the natural resources. Sri Lanka has a long history when it comes to sustainable development with the world’s first nature sanctuary being declared in ancient Sri Lanka. Development in ancient Sri Lanka was based in an environmental impact assessment.

More recently, Sri Lanka has introduced Constitutional guarantees and national policies on environmental conservation and is a signatory to the Convention of Biological Diversity. It is also the first country in Asia to prepare a national environmental action plan, but what is our record of practice, questioned Pilapitiya, short-term economic development or sustainable development?

Some examples of unsustainable development are the prawn farms in the North Western Province, the filling of wetlands in metropolitan Colombo which is now investing a tremendous amount of money trying to reverse the mistake, which costs far more; land alienation for sugar cane cultivation and development in the Walawe left bank area.

“This does not mean we should not have such developmental projects but land use should be better planned and development options compatible with the natural resource base should be pursued. The only MDG Sri Lanka is not on track to meet is MDG 7: ensuring environmental sustainability. Sri Lanka is not on track to meet this, according to the Ministry of Finance; that means our current development is not environmentally sustainable,” he pointed out.

Looking at large-scale developmental projects going on today, a strategic environmental assessment has been prepared for the greater Hambantota development plan and a pretty good one, said Pilapitiya. However, despite having those plans, there are contradictory reports in the papers that say elephants are going to be driven out, which according to the plan is not necessary, so there are plans but no one seems to be implementing them.

When considering the management of biodiversity, it is obvious that the expansion of the protected area network is not possible due to the country’s high population density. Latest advances in conservation look at a landscape approach to preserve tropical forests and biodiversity so that conservation goals and human needs can both be met.

“Development is not only achieved through mega and large-scale infrastructure development and it shouldn’t be looked as a blanket remedy for all parts of the country. Sri Lanka is the best location for charismatic species outside Africa and conservation tourism can still be developed by maintaining these resources, but are we taking the right path to promote conservation tourism? The focus seems to be on the number of tourists, but what we should concentrate on is the quality of the tourism,” Pilapitiya stated.

A survey was conducted by interviewing over 2,000 foreign visitors to wildlife parks in Sri Lanka, which showed high satisfaction with the wildlife experience, but some of the negative points included the overcrowding of parks, traffic congestion and the poor quality of the guides. Tourists revealed that they are willing to pay 60% more as entrance fees if the quality of the experience improves.

Numbers are not what you look for in conservation tourism, it’s the quality of the experience that counts and Pilapitiya recommended aiming for high value added low impact tourism. Surveys show that non-package tourists visiting national parks spend more than double compared to the regular package tourists.

Accommodation facilities should be low impact centred safari camping and eco-friendly resorts in forests that are outside the buffer zone. A very little is done in terms of investment in the conservation of natural resources but for long-term tourism this must be done.

Extra investment in greening the infrastructure in sensitive eco-systems is needed. Development projects in such area should be sensitive to the ecosystem and be within its carrying capacity. While he admitted that costs would be higher, he pointed out that too would be a good thing as both the Government and the private sector would think twice before having developmental projects in sensitive areas or conservation landscapes.

The environmentalist went on to say that a paradigm shift is needed to save the Asian elephant, which is Sri Lanka’s flagship species. Elephant conservation is important from an ecological perspective as an umbrella species.

“Development and biodiversity conservation go hand in hand to ensure sustainable economic development. Sri Lanka already has examples of the economic costs when biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services are ignored or undervalued. The Government and developers need to take a long-term view of economic development and its sustainability in conservation landscapes which have economic value but we have to sustain it – it is beneficial to any private sector project to do it right and invest back in conservation. I also recommend that you join hands with the Government and discuss such recommendations without just handing them over, which may be ignored,” Pilapitiya added.

The first session of the two-day forum was on tourism and biodiversity with Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators (SLAITO) Director Nishad Wijetunge, EU – SWITCH Asia Greening Hotel Project Director Srilal Miththapala and Sri Lanka Tourism Director of Standard Quality Assurance Upali Ratnayake as panellists.

The first panellist Wijetunge, speaking on responsible tourism, defined tourism management strategy as embracing planning management, product development and marketing to bring about positive economic social and cultural and environmental impacts.

“Commitment involved in a tourism project includes sourcing and employing from within that area so that the benefits trickle down to the community itself. We don’t have man-made sites, all what we sell is nature so we need to look at understanding local cultures and supporting each area. So the protection of the natural assets that we have and certain areas is of paramount importance and if we don’t encourage local communities to protect these we are not going to have anything to sell in time to come,” he stressed.

Commitment to continual improvement when it comes to hotels is important and there are always new products that are more energy efficient coming out which are expensive in the short term but provide a lot of benefits in the long-term and therefore should be invested in, he said.

“Since the mid-1990s, there has been a shift towards defining economic performance in terms of the triple bottom line – growth that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. Responsible tourism addresses this shift by giving equal weight to the economy society and the environment. The three pillars of sustainable development,” Wijetunge added.

People who come to SL now are more interested in meeting people and finding out more about the country, a holiday and somewhat of an educational process.

Moving onto the issue of economic responsibility in tourism, the Director pointed out that the revenue that leaks out of the local area can be minimised by employing and purchasing locally and creating business opportunities within the local community and to increase infrastructure in the area which will all contribute to a positive tourist experience.  Tourism however has played its role in destroying the natural environment which is why the clean air, safe water, a proper waste management system and good environment activity-based tourism is important.

Currently over 235 million people work in the global tourism industry which represents 9% of the global GDP and 8% of global employment. The number of international tourists is supposed to double reaching around 1.5 billion arrivals by 2020.

“Biodiversity is the ultimate source of livelihood for those involved in tourism and it is therefore in the industry’s best interest to protect the biodiversity in the country,” Wijetunge said.

Drawing upon examples outside Sri Lanka, he stated that Australia empowers indigenous and non-indigenous communities and build ups local distinctiveness and enables city dwellers to reconnect with nature for health and wellbeing. The country also believes that tourism has a moral obligation out of Government policy to cut green house gas emissions. India too has come out with an ecotourism draft which gives stringent guidelines how nature parks should be used in ecotourism. Most countries have a responsible tourism code and this is something that needs to develop for Sri Lanka as well, he added.

“While activities have been initiated through responsible tourism partnerships in Sri Lanka there are no proper strict policies. While there are policies, they are not properly enforced when it comes to visiting natural parks and so on and many people living in biodiversity hotspots are financially unstable and they tend to abuse the biodiversity,” he stated.

Miththapala speaking on nature based tourism commenced by listing out the fundamentals of eco-tourists, namely responsible travel to fragile, pristine and usually protected areas that strives to be low impact and small scale.

“Sustainable tourism provides funds for conservation and directly benefits the local community. Sri Lanka hotels are very poor at this but they have been improving over the past four to five years. Such tourism also educates the traveller and helps foster different cultures. When you look at sustainable tourism it’s not just one thing, it’s an umbrella that covers all types of tourism,” he said.

Looking at Sri Lanka as a nature based destination, the country currently boasts eight UNESCO sites, biodiversity hotspots about 30% of the land has some forest cover, lot of varied ecological zones, has the highest density of wild elephants in Asia and is a great place to see whales amongst many others proving that the country is very much in this space.  However, with this comes many negative effects and Miththapala went onto list some experienced in the country already including traffic jams at Yala and boats disturbing whales. Concerns have been raised by the new initiatives by the State such as the dredging and de-silting of the Minneriya reservoir, export of wild animals, the proposed changes in Fauna and Flora Act, roadways through national parks, etc.

“The SLDA has no approval scheme for eco accommodation. New hotels now have a new guideline with a new classification system and the SLDTA are in the process of formulating further guidelines. We need more transparency, involve the public sector far more heavily, create awareness, say no to political pressure, have professional leadership at the top, follow a consultative approach and keep to long-term plans to meet the set targets,” he stated.

Sri Lanka Tourism Director of Standard Quality Assurance Upali Ratnayake added that Sri Lanka could easily reach the set targets, which was proved by the 46% growth rate seen in the country last year.

“We have an excellent resource base with nature and need to follow a sustainable development approach in which the NTO has a role to play and we need to work on the development of tourism product and services with the assistance of the private sector,” he said.

Speaking on the future plans of Sri Lanka Tourism, he stated that the future of tourism in the country depends on the suitable initiatives taken today. Some of the actions proposed include the identification of lands for proposed resorts, incorporating them with the master plans at a district, provincial and UDA level, developing comfort centres along tourist routes and preparing integrated tourist plans for proposed resorts in locations like Kalpitiya and Bentota.

Ratnayake also emphasised on the importance of linking up the North and the East to the rest of the country by opening up more resorts in the areas in the future and developing new tourist routes.

On the topic of ecotourism, he revealed that there has been a growth of 15% in ecotourism and that the average expenditure of an eco-tourist is much higher than that of an average tourist and with the comparative advantages Sri Lanka has over competing destinations, ecotourism could prove to be a great asset.

He did admit that the overheads for meeting various global quality standards are very high and furthermore, it is an industry with heavy dependability on external markets and is affected by the characteristics of seasonality. The current estimate to build a five-star hotel room requires an investment of Rs. 7.5 million, he said. Therefore to sustain overall profitability investors need to look at biodiversity, Ratnayake concluded.

During the group discussion with the panellists, Wijetunge raised concerns about the development in Passekudah. The land has been divided into 15 blocks of which 13 are for the development of resorts which are expected to be built in record time but he raised concerns about proper waste management and so on which may be overlooked in the process.

Ratnayake assured that an infrastructure master plan has been developed and while the Government was initially was to invest money in such management, it has now been given over to a private company who have devised a central waste management system for all resorts in the area.

In response to a query about if the private sector has done its part in taking Sri Lanka forward as a biodiversity hotspot, Miththapala pointed out that the sector was only now realising its potential as a marketable product and added that they now have environmental experts coming in and while some hotels have taken such initiatives forward to a great extent, he admitted that the sector still has a long way to go but is slowly getting there.

“The private sector has a huge role to play in the investment of conservation seeing that the Government is not making such investments. If the private sector is looking to make money from conservation tourism, they should invest too,” added Pilapitiya.