Tourism, Environment, and Community in Sulawesi, Indonesia
By Geoffrey Wall
For both biological and historical reasons, Sulawesi can be viewed as the Galapagos of Asia as it sits astride the Wallace Line, the convergence zone of the Australasian and Asian geological plates, and has a variety of endemic and endangered species. Wallace was a contemporary of Darwin, undertaking similar research related to species diversity and the origin of species and making similar discoveries at the same time.Although rich biologically, Sulawesi is a poor area and both national and provincial governments have identified tourism as having the potential to contribute to development in Eastern Indonesia, of which Sulawesi is a part. This tourism would be based substantially on its natural resources and, depending upon the form which it takes, could help to sustain or further undermine them.
To date, our research has concentrated upon North Sulawesi. We have argued that both the protection of natural resources and the enhancement of local communities are essential if Sulawesi is to be moved in the direction of sustainability, and that positive synergistic relationships should be sought between tourism, biodiversity, and local communities and implemented through appropriate management. Analytical frameworks of wide applicability have been developed to assess the status of ecotourism in parks and protected areas and have been applied to a marine and a terrestrial park and a nature reserve. The frameworks provide a diagrammatic means of identifying the presence or absence of major attributes of ecotourism as identified from the literature. Missing links reveal aspects of ecotourism requiring managerial attention. It has been shown that, although rich in natural resources, the parks and protected areas fall short in many ways of meeting the requirements of ecotourism, strictly defined.
Indonesia has well-developed environmental impact legislation, Analisis Mengenai Dampak Lingkungan (AMDAL). The AMDAL process and its requirements have been examined from both theoretical and practical perspectives and an assessment has been made of the application of AMDAL to two major resort developments in North Sulawesi. While admirable in theory, it has been shown that the practical application of AMDAL has been deficient at both study sites. At the same time, the consequences of essentially similar resort developments for people living in and around the sites has been substantially different, leading to the conclusion that the nature of project implementation has substantial implications for the associated impacts of tourism on destination area communities.
Our research continues in two major directions: an assessment of the implications of park designation for residents living in and around Bunaken National Marine Park and an investigation of the status of and potential for ecotourism in the Togian Islands. In the former case, interviews will be conducted in communities to ascertain the distribution of benefits and costs associated with the park. In the latter case, a two-level SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis will be undertaken, initially for the whole of the Togian Islands using secondary information and then for selected villages based on fieldwork. It is also likely that some additional tourism research will be undertaken in an urbanizing environment near Ujung Pandang, South Sulawesi, where reservoir construction and coastal 'reclamation' are modifying resource capabilities.
Geoffrey Wall is Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada.