Liu, J., V. Hull, J. Luo, W. Yang, W. Liu, A. Viña, C. Vogt, Z. Xu, H. Yang, J. Zhang, L. An, X. Chen, S. Li, Z. Ouyang, W. Xu and H. Zhang 2015. Multiple telecouplings and their complex interrelationships. Ecology and Society 20(3):44.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07868-200344

Nature-based tourism has the potential to enhance global biodiversity conservation by providing alternative livelihood strategies for local people, which may alleviate poverty in and around protected areas. Despite the popularity of the concept of nature-based tourism as an integrated conservation and development tool, empirical research on its actual socioeconomic benefits, on the distributional pattern of these benefits, and on its direct driving factors is lacking, because relevant long-term data are rarely available. In a multi-year study in Wolong Nature Reserve, China, we followed a representative sample of 220 local households from 1999 to 2007 to investigate the diverse benefits that these households received from recent development of nature-based tourism in the area. Within eight years, the number of households directly participating in tourism activities increased from nine to sixty. In addition, about two-thirds of the other households received indirect financial benefits from tourism. We constructed an empirical household economic model to identify the factors that led to household-level participation in tourism. The results reveal the effects of local households' livelihood assets (i.e., financial, human, natural, physical, and social capitals) on the likelihood to participate directly in tourism. In general, households with greater financial (e.g., income), physical (e.g., access to key tourism sites), human (e.g., education), and social (e.g., kinship with local government officials) capitals and less natural capital (e.g., cropland) were more likely to participate in tourism activities. We found that residents in households participating in tourism tended to perceive more non-financial benefits in addition to more negative environmental impacts of tourism compared with households not participating in tourism. These findings suggest that socioeconomic impact analysis and change monitoring should be included in nature-based tourism management systems for long-term sustainability of protected areas.

Nature-based tourism in protected areas, which is growing worldwide, offers much potential to enhance biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation, and ultimately sustainable development. Understanding the evolution of protected areas as tourism destinations and the causes and consequences of changing supply and demand elements is an essential step toward sustainably managing tourism in these critical ecosystems. This research applied the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model to illustrate and analyze the 30-year evolution of tourism in Wolong Nature Reserve. Being inscribed in UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage programmes, Wolong is a flagship protected area in China. We showed that the Reserve experienced exploration, involvement, and development stages of the TALC before tourism growth was completely halted by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008. We systematically investigated the changes related to the evolution of tourism and identified various internal and external driving forces. We examined the dynamics of politics, economy, and tourism growth that might propel the Reserve through the life cycle and identified significant tourism governance structural changes through the stages. The results have implications for sustainable tourism development in China's protected areas and also contribute to a broader and general understanding of the complex relationships between protected areas, sustainable tourism, and community development.

Nepal is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change due to its high-relief topography, heavy monsoon rainfall, and weak governance. Landslides are common across almost all Nepal’s vast Himalaya mountains, of which the Far Western region suffers most, and climate change, coupled with severe under-development is expected to exacerbate the situation. Deficiency in spatial data and information seriously hinder the design and effective implementation of development plans, especially in the least developed areas, such as Seti River Basin in Far Western Nepal, where landslides constantly devastate landscapes and communities. We adopted a participatory mapping process with emerging collaborative digital mapping techniques to tackle the problem of critical information gaps, especially spatial risk information at local levels which compromise efforts for sustainable landscape planning and uses in disaster prone regions. In short, participatory here refers to working with local stakeholders and collaborative refers to crowdsourced map information with citizens and professionals. Engaging a wide range of stakeholders and non-stakeholder citizens in this integrated mapping processes eventually structure human capital at local scales with skills and knowledge on maps and mapping techniques. Also, this approach increases spatial knowledge and their uses in development planning at the local level and eventually increases landscape resilience through improved information management. We will further discuss how this integrated approach may provide an effective link between planning, designing, and implementing development plans amid fast policy and environmental changes and implications for communities in the developing world, especially in the context of climate change and its cascading effects.