How do We Deal with Our Agendas in a Time of Turbulence?

We all know that times are difficult, that protected area managers are challenged like never before, that planning and then implementation are difficult to put together. Yet, in this difficult time, we still have that job to do.

We are tempted to search for simplistic solutions, particularly in light of the accelerating demand for protected area tourism. These are solutions that quick to implement, but focused primarily on challenges that are really just symptoms of deeper down trends. In this talk, given at the Virtual Conference on Improving Tourism in Protected Areas amidst the COVID Pandemic, I shared three actions we need to take when dealing with our short and longterm agendas. These are Diving Deeper, Thinking Differently and Acting Holistically. This video develops the rationale for this way of linking thinking with doing and provides examples. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFEa9cPh6K4

 

New Report on Forest Service involvement in Public Use Management on Brazil Federal Protected Areas in Brazil

I was fortunate to work with a large group of U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and University faculty and Brazilian conservation unit managers, central office planners and professors the last five years on a project to enhance connections between the Brazilian public and their public lands. Attached is the final report to USAID which funded most of that effort. It was a great experience, and as I have said before, strangers became colleagues who eventually become friends.

The work in Brazil was heavy and busy at times; my work was principally dealing with classes on protected area planning, facilitated also by American and Brazilian colleagues. This occurred in different parts of Brazil and the Brazilian Amazon. We both learned a lot during this time, and often employed double-loop learning. Thanks to Michelle Zweede from Forest Service International Programs and Suelene Couto and Lorena Brewster who helped with the program design and implementation. All the meeting were conducted with simultaneous translation conducted by incredible translators of Polare, a fine company from Brazil.

Those of you who want to take a look at the report, which is very different from many reports, can click on the link below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dDfXocQSGy7Il0yhgyrNb2bQIAzTZX7E/view?usp=sharing

Steve McCool and Keith Bosak produce new book on Research and Sustainable Tourism

One aspect of managing for sustainable tourism is research and science. As our knowledge base increases we build understanding of how resilient systems and communities function and the role of tourism in working toward that goal. Steve and Keith have put together a new book published by Edward Elgar Publishing. Titled "A Research Agenda for Sustainable Tourism" or RAST for short, the authors, from many places in the world, identify important previous research and information needs confronting tourism destination and protected area managers, academics and other scientists. The book contains 15 chapters on such subjects as sustainable tourism research and climate change, public lands, UN Development Goals, systems thinking, health, business, community based tourism, and marketing. Each chapter is written by experienced scientists. The book will be launched on 27 September 2019. You can find more information, including ordering at Edward Elgar Publishing (https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/a-research-agenda-for-sustainable-tourism) or at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Research-Agenda-Sustainable-Tourism-Agendas/dp/1788117093/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=research+agenda+for+sustainable+tourism&qid=1567348640&s=gateway&sr=8-1).

And watch for a new Facebook page when this book launches!

Webinar on Over Tourism in National Parks and Protected Areas Released!

One result of the essays on the notion of Over Tourism was a Webinar sponsored in part by the Tourism and Protected Areas Specialist Group of IUCN, the PUP Global Heritage Consortium and the 10YFP of the UN. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BPw-pwNM7Y. If you watch, please hit the Like button. Thanks!

What is Overtourism and What Can We Do About It

Part V

This series of essays has been designed to bring some order to the dialogue about what is now referred to, principally in Europe, I think, by the term Overtourism. Certainly, the concerns are well founded. However, as professionals we bear a special responsibility to clarify, deliberate and respond. Overtourism may, at its simplistic be a peak loading issue, but is likely far more challenging, enduring and complex than we currently imagine.

So what have we learned? First, we need agreement, at least at a general level of what overtourism is, and that is why I suggested a working definition. Clarification means that we communicate with intention and an explicitness that moves dialogue forward. And it also means we are efficient in our communication.

Second, we need to understand the context before we act. This context is specific to each protected area, although the variables may be similar. And we know that at a broad level, this context is one of complexity, uncertainty, change, and often one of conflict. We need to understand this complexity before we apply simple, and many times, simplistic responses (for a good discussion of this for protected areas see https://www.academia.edu/11847185/Benefitting_from_Complexity_thinking).

Third, we need to act upon conceptually sound principles, of visitor management principles derived from science and experience. Those principles exist, and application of them can lead to innovative ideas and clarity about management actions.

Fourth, a framework of which there are several, including the new Interagency Visitor Use Management Framework which is referred to earlier, help us “work through” complicated challenges. These frameworks have been applied in a variety of situations and work where there is an organizational committment to see them through.

Fifth, we need to think more holistically about our planning. I did not write much about this, but our planning in general is not working well because our mental models (basically a science based, expert driven paradigm) of conventional planning is built upon assumptions that are no longer valid.

And finally, we need to build the managerial capacity to function in the context of complexity, change and uncertainty. Our capacity to manage visitation and tourism is very limited. There are few opportunities for continuing education and training in our field. I have facilitated several of these. But we need more. Just a few dozen managers receive training in visitor management each year as near as I can determine—mid level decision makers who must translate policy dictates into operational programs have few opportunities. While this need is recognized by WCPA (https://www.academia.edu/2338522/Building_the_Capability_to_Manage_Tourism_as_Support_for_the_Aichi_Target) there seems to be little international leadership in developing courses aimed at mid-level tourism and visitation managers. I hope I am wrong, please list courses you know of. Perhaps this is a role for TAPAS.

In sum, we are confronted with a great challenge, of providing opportunities for high quality visitor experiences (which are at the foundation of connecting people with nature) while ensuring negative impact to values protected is maintained at acceptable levels and while attempting to build resilience in local communities. Are we going to do something about overtourism or are we going to stand at the sidelines? If we do something, what shall we do as professionals?

What is Overtourism and What Can We Do About It?

Part IV

I concluded the last part by proposing a tentative definition of what Overtourism is, and now I will turn to presenting a starting point to addressing it. In this Part, and the concluding Part, I will cite some literature, most of it accessible, but written in English. Few people write about management of visitation and tourism in protected areas, so nearly all of what I cite is my own work and that of close colleagues. I invite others to add to this work in responses to these essays.

To address Overtourism, a number of things are needed. We need a set of principles which underlie planning and management actions, and we need a framework to help us build our situational awareness and help apply critical thinking skills (see for example https://www.academia.edu/3612776/A_Heuristic_Framework_for_Reflecting_on_Protected_Areas_and_Their_Stewardship_in_the_21st_Century). Of course, we will also need to reflect upon our own mental models of the situation and recognize that we can benefit from complexity thinking (https://www.academia.edu/11847185/Benefitting_from_Complexity_thinking). We need to plan more holistically, as Jon Kohl and I noted in the Future has Other Plans.

Today, I am going focus on principles and frameworks, but this will be very brief. For about 30 years, I have operating on a number of visitor management “principles” (they are probably more like insights than princples, but principles sounds better!). They have been derived from research and professional experience with visitor management, and they have been written in such a way as to cross types of protected areas, marine, terrestrial, cultural, natural, local parks as well as World Heritage Sites. These 11 principles are stated in Table 1. I will only discuss one of them, but you can read short summaries here (https://www.academia.edu/941160/Protected_Area_Planning_Principles_and_Strategies).

I will not say much more about these principles here, but would like to demonstrate Principle 4, impacts are inevitable consequences of visitor use. Research on the use/impact relationship by such scientists as David Cole, Yu-Fai Leung and Jeff Marion (see for example, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jeffrey_Marion/publication/251808453_Recreation_Impacts_and_Management_in_Wilderness_A_State-of-Knowledge_Review/links/552414cc0cf2caf11bfcbf37.pdf) shows that a little bit of initial use leads to a disproportionae amount of impact the relationship looks like this, schematically with use level on the X axis and impact on the Y axis

The nature of this relationship means that where we already experience high levels of use, we will have high levels of impacts, and reducing use (and only use) will have little impact. This is true in both the biophysical and social domains. For example, the visitation at Yellowstone National Park is currently over 4 million visits per year, way to the right side of this graphic. It has a certain infrastructure that will not change even if use drops to 2 million or less visitors. The impacts of past decisions are here to stay, absent some major systemic level decision.

The graph also shows that focus of decisions ought to be ( and I respectfully suggest this) on the Y axis, the amount of impact that is acceptable. Since the curve that is in the graph is an average, there is variability around it. That variability means that factors other than use level influence impact, things such as visitor behavior, type of use, season of use, soils, visitor expectations and motivations and so on. For example on my recent family visit to Yellowstone. I knew visitation would be high, so my expectation were more in terms of family togetherness and learning, and viewing landscapes, and lots of bison than having the park to myself.

This graph also means that spreading use more evenly, sometimes advocated by protected area managers and academics is probably not the best strategy for minimizing impacts.

Finally, in this brief essay, we can think where we set the standard, at what point on the Y axis and how we make the decision and how that decision is made. Important questions about the role of science and public engagement.

Lets turn to frameworks for managing visitation and providing opportunities for quality visitor experiences. There are several, including but not limited to the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum, Limits of Acceptable Change, Visitor Experience and Resource Protection, Tourism Optimization and Management Model. They were mainly developed to respond to a carrying capacity approach which has failed both in theory and practice (for a short overview, see https://www.academia.edu/22773434/Rethinking_Carrying_Capacity). Each of these are described here, which was originally written for American protected area managers, so the first couple of chapters may not be that informative for many (https://www.academia.edu/394989/An_assessment_of_frameworks_useful_for_public_land_recreation_planning). Warning, this last document is more of a book than a short article.

Recently, the federal land management agencies in the U.S. have put together an Interagency Visitor Use Management Process, which was the subject of two TAPAS sponsored webinars. I think this would also be a good starting point for discussions about what we can do about overtourism, although again, several of the components are related only to U.S. policy and law. Read about it here: https://visitorusemanagement.nps.gov/VUM/Framework.

An important note: the frameworks here are not answers or solutions. What they do is help guide us through the critical thinking needed to address the challenges of managing visitors in protected areas. They are process oriented. Those who apply them use their own special knowledge of a local protected area and apply that in the frameworks.