Journal of Ecotourism

ISSN: 1472-4049 (Print) 1747-7638 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reco20

Constraints of community participation in

protected area-based tourism planning: the case
of Malawi

Felix G. Bello, Brent Lovelock & Neil Carr

To cite this article: Felix G. Bello, Brent Lovelock & Neil Carr (2016): Constraints of community
participation in protected area-based tourism planning: the case of Malawi, Journal of
Ecotourism, DOI: 10.1080/14724049.2016.1251444

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14724049.2016.1251444

Published online: 25 Nov 2016.

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JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14724049.2016.1251444

Constraints of community participation in protected

area-based tourism planning: the case of Malawi
a,b
Felix G. Bello , Brent Lovelockb and Neil Carrb
a
Department of Tourism, Mzuzu University, Mzuzu, Malawi; bDepartment of Tourism, University of
Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

An approach to tourism development that emphasises the Received 5 December 2015
need for community participation in tourism planning is Accepted 5 October 2016
advocated as a pathway to sustainable tourism and poverty
KEYWORDS
alleviation. However, it is argued that the community Community participation;
participation concept originated in the developed world ecotourism planning;
and faces different and context-specific limitations when protected area-based
applied in developing countries. This paper examines the tourism; developing
implementation of local community participation in countries; southern Africa;
planning associated with ecotourism in protected areas in Malawi
Malawi. The views of villagers, along with other key
stakeholders, including ecotourism operators, protected
area management agencies, government departments and
non-governmental organisations were investigated through
a qualitative study undertaken around the two case-study
sites of Liwonde National Park and Majete Wildlife Reserve.
Data were collected through in-depth interviews and focus
group discussions, and was thematically analysed. The
findings reveal significant limiting factors affecting
community participation in ecotourism planning in Malawi,
including: apathy; inadequate financial resources;
inadequate information; low education levels; unfair
distribution of benefits; lack of trained human resources; a
centralised public administration; lack of coordination; and
human–wildlife conflicts. The findings indicate the need for
both greater advocacy of community participation, and the
need to incorporate specific strategies which can facilitate
community participation that are tailored to developing
country contexts.

Introduction
The ecotourism and conservation sectors do not exist to serve each other but
where the two sectors overlap their operations can be critical to the success of
both (Buckley, 2010). With increasing ecotourism demand (Balmford et al.,
2009), many protected area management agencies use ecotourism as a source
of revenue to supplement or substitute government conservation funding. In

CONTACT Felix G. Bello felixbello2015@gmail.com

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 F. G. BELLO ET AL.

an effort to balance the social and economic needs of local communities and bio-
diversity conservation, ecotourism is used both as a local development and as a
conservation tool (Robinson, 1993; Snyman, 2016). Therefore, it is important for
ecotourism in protected areas to make a net positive contribution to both the
conservation of the natural environment and local development.
Most ecotourism operations in protected areas attempt to balance the goals of
preserving biodiversity, allowing access for visitors to enjoy and appreciate
nature, and supporting local development (McCool, 2009). Importantly, eco-
tourism planning and protected area policy are expected to provide resolutions
to a number of key issues affecting conservation and local development (Bushell
& Eagles, 2007). Furthermore, community participation in such planning is
advocated as an important means of achieving sustainable tourism development
and improving the livelihood of local communities (Adeleke & Nzama, 2013;
Tosun & Jenkins, 1996). But as noted by a number of researchers, community
participation in sustainable tourism development processes faces many chal-
lenges in the developing world (Marzuki, Hay, & James, 2012; Saufi, O’Brien,
& Wilkins, 2014). The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that
limit local community participation in ecotourism planning associated with pro-
tected areas in a developing country context. The paper focuses on two protected
areas in Malawi, Liwonde National Park and Majete Wildlife Reserve. For the
purposes of this paper, local communities are defined as people permanently
living around protected areas and having both culturally and traditionally a
relationship with the protected area. In the southern Africa region, both conser-
vation and ecotourism in and around protected areas are of vital importance to
both ecosystem management and economic development (Chiutsi, Mukoro-
verwa, Karigambe, & Mudzengi, 2011; Ferreira, 2004). Furthering our knowl-
edge of participatory processes in protected area ecotourism planning makes
this study highly relevant to sustainable tourism development goals, especially
in a developing world context.

Local community participation in tourism planning

An approach to tourism development processes that emphasises the need for
local control and community tourism planning has long been advocated as a
response to the need to develop more socially acceptable tourism (e.g.
Murphy, 1985). Community participation in tourism is now receiving attention
as an element of local economic development, conservation, and the global
tourism industry where there is an opportunity for product diversification
and cashing in on new marketable assets (Ashley & Roe, 1998; Serenari, Peter-
son, Wallace, & Stowhas, 2016). Tosun (2006) contends that participatory devel-
opment approaches where the community is involved facilitates implementation
of the principles of sustainable tourism development, as local people have better
opportunities and gain larger and more balanced benefits from tourism
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 3

development in their communities. For ecotourism specifically, it is believed that

when local communities participate in and receive economic benefits from eco-
tourism, then it can partially substitute for less sustainable uses of natural
resources (Li, 2006; Mearns, 2012).
There are several factors which have contributed to the attention being given
to community participation in tourism planning. Hibbard (1999) points out that
local communities in the United States (and in most other developed countries)
have undergone a devolution process where there is support for local control of
planning and decision-making, and hence the community planning approach
should be relatively straightforward in the developed world. According to Arn-
stein (1969), citizen participation involves the redistribution of power that
enables peoples’ involvement in decision-making. However, the redistribution
of power in decision-making can bring challenges for the application of the com-
munity planning approach in developing countries which have not experienced
such devolution and often have more centralised government systems (Tosun &
Timothy, 2001).
Li (2006) and Tosun (2000) argue that the community-based approach to
tourism planning and development originated from the developed world and
has been advocated by researchers writing on developed countries, and that
their claims may not necessarily be applicable in developing countries without
considering local factors. There are a number of limitations to the approach
in developing countries (Tosun, 2000) which mean that although the principle
of community participation is sound, the approach’s validity and practicality
in developing countries are questionable (Li, 2006). Most developing countries
are characterised by high rates of population growth, increasing income inequal-
ity, high and increasing unemployment, inadequate skilled human resources,
low levels of capital accumulation, a high level of centralisation in public admin-
istration system, elite domination in political life, high levels of favouritism and
nepotism, and inadequate or no democratic experience (Todaro, 1994; Tosun,
2005). As a result, the use of the more Western-centric participation frameworks
has not yielded the expected benefits and authorities stand accused of only using
the participation concept to legitimise decisions made (Botes & Van Rensburg,
2000).

Constraints of local community participation in tourism development

processes
Some of the limitations to community involvement in tourism in developing
countries include the following: centralised public administration and planning;
lack of coordination and fragmented planning system; incomprehensible
tourism data; lack of qualified personnel in community planning; elite domina-
tion; lack of appropriate legal and regulatory systems; high costs; and apathy
(Tosun, 2000, 2005). Administrative and planning powers in most developing
4 F. G. BELLO ET AL.

countries are centralised (Tosun & Timothy, 2001), but any effective implemen-
tation of community participation needs decentralisation of political, adminis-
trative and financial powers from central government (Tosun, 2000).
In many developing countries, there are several organisations and govern-
ment departments which have interest in tourism development though they
are not actively involved due to fragmented planning processes (Haywood,
1988; Hiwasaki, 2006). Lack of coordination is a well-known problem in the
tourism industry (Jamal & Getz, 1995). Fragmentation and lack of coordination
bring problems in resolving conflicts over use of certain resources and locations
for various types of tourism development and this eventually makes the
implementation of community tourism planning ineffective.
Many local people in developing countries lack information on tourism, as
there are usually insufficient tourism data and the available information is dis-
seminated to the public in incomprehensible forms (Hall, 2008; Marzuki et al.,
2012; Tosun, 2000). This eventually creates a very big information gap between
local communities and other stakeholders in the planning process. Furthermore,
most developing countries lack qualified personnel in community planning and
the available planners have little experience of how to incorporate citizen partici-
pation in their planning (Timothy, 1999; Tosun, 2000).
Tourism development reflects local values and generates sustainable out-
comes if local residents are empowered and involved fully in decision-making
and ownership of tourism enterprises (Laws, 1995; Sebele, 2010; Stabler,
1997). But, in most developing countries, tourism activities are mostly domi-
nated by very few elites in the communities, resulting in lack of meaningful own-
ership of the initiatives (Marzuki et al., 2012). The community participation
process is mostly dominated by the vocal, wealthier, more articulate and edu-
cated members of the community. Due to lack of meaningful representative
and deliberative democracy, only the interests of the dominant class end up
being favoured at the expense of the majority.
Many developing countries also lack the appropriate legal and regulatory
systems which can support and defend the interests of local communities and
ensure that they are involved in tourism development planning (Tosun,
2000). Effective public participation in planning needs legal structures and insti-
tutional arrangements which can support local communities’ participation
(Tosun, 2000). But many local authorities in developing countries lack recog-
nised units or fail to utilise available units to take a leading role in community
planning at the local level.
Public participation in tourism planning is an expensive process in terms of
time, money and skills required to organise the whole process (Hall, 2008;
Tosun, 2000). Most central governments look at public participation as
unnecessary and time consuming, as the process needs government officials to
interact with citizens (Haywood, 1988). The private sector also views community
participation in tourism planning as an expensive process, as it delays
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 5

decision-making, hence making business operations non-profitable (Blackstock,

2005; Haywood, 1988). Local communities in developing countries also lack the
financial resources or affordable financing to start tourism enterprises with
higher economic returns (Ashley & Garland, 1994; Sirima & Backman, 2013;
Wells, 1996).
In most local communities, only a few people are committed to development
planning processes and with tourism, it is usually the business groups that show
interest (Murphy, 1988). There is often apathy from local people in the involve-
ment in tourism development processes (Hall, 2008). Local people in most
developing countries have little or limited capacity to be interested in handling
issues affecting their communities and as a result, few people get involved in
issues beyond their immediate family domain (Tosun, 2000).

Communities and ecotourism in protected areas

Ecotourism relies heavily on stakeholder involvement; hence, efforts need to be
made to improve the links between nature conservation, local community devel-
opment and the tourism industry (Ceballos-Lascurain, 1996). It is argued that
stakeholder involvement should consider two main points: who should be con-
sidered stakeholders in ecotourism planning and development; and how plan-
ners and developers should involve stakeholders in the development of
tourism (Wearing & Neil, 2009). For ecotourism associated with protected
areas, these stakeholders include protected area management agencies, govern-
ment departments, local residents, rural development agencies, tourism oper-
ators and donors.
In many southern African countries, historically, the designation of protected
areas has displaced many local communities from the land on which they relied
for their livelihoods (Sirima & Backman, 2013). Therefore, various stakeholders
have used different compensatory mechanisms to effectively manage the protected
areas (Eagles & McCool, 2002; Scherl & Edwards, 2007). Some local communities
have been compensated for losing their traditional land and access to resources
after protected area designation (Scheyvens, 1999). In addition, some ecotourism
initiatives have been designed to foster the livelihood security of local commu-
nities and maintenance of the social and cultural integrity of the local commu-
nities adjacent to protected areas (Mahony & Van Zyl, 2002). However, as is
the case with many community ecotourism initiatives associated with protected
areas across Africa, there have been mixed reports about local community partici-
pation and the impact of these ecotourism developments on the livelihood of local
communities (Chaderopa, 2011; Mabunda & Wilson, 2009).
A review of contemporary literature shows that there are few in-depth studies
that have been undertaken in southern African countries that examine the pro-
tected area-based tourism and local community relationship. These few studies
fail to examine local community participation in decision-making during the
6 F. G. BELLO ET AL.

planning processes. In order to facilitate the participation of local communities

in the wildlife and ecotourism sectors in southern Africa, many countries have
adopted Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM)-related
policies (Hulme & Murphree, 2001; Stone & Stone, 2011).
Although the literature indicates that CBNRM is popular in many southern
African countries, there are still challenges that hinder local communities’ par-
ticipation in such ecotourism development processes (Stone & Stone, 2011). The
underlying philosophy of the CBNRM programmes in southern African
countries is that there is a need for communities to receive benefits arising
from the use of natural resources for them to manage their resource base sustain-
ably (Steiner & Rihoy, 1995). However, different programmes in different
countries have achieved variable results in their pursuit to involve local people
in protected area-based tourism development processes (Novelli & Gebhardt,
2007; Sebele, 2010; Stone & Stone, 2011). For example, in Namibia, with the
implementation of conservancy legislation which supports CBNRM pro-
grammes, some functional participation has been achieved, but Novelli and Geb-
hardt (2007) note that government and NGOs still need to offer continuous
training and technical support for local communities’ participation in ecotour-
ism development processes. Conversely, at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary Trust in
Botswana, Sebele (2010) and Stone and Stone (2011) found that though the
sanctuary is claimed to be a local initiative, lack of tourism information to
local people and elite dominance has hampered local people’s participation.
Therefore, this study seeks to contribute to ecotourism literature, the constraints
of local community participation in the decision-making processes in ecotour-
ism planning associated with protected areas within a southern African setting.

Research context
Malawi is a landlocked nation in southern Africa, has an estimated population of
16 million, and with one of the highest population densities in the region (NSO,
2008) that is placing increased pressure on the country’s natural resources (Pro-
tected Areas Working Group, 1997). Malawi’s economy is predominantly
dependent on agriculture, although in recent years efforts have been made to
diversify the economy to other sectors such as tourism and mining.
The current National Tourism Policy identifies roles for local communities in
the tourism industry which include seeking partnership opportunities with
established tourism enterprises and establishing community committees and
cooperatives as tools for effective interaction with government and other stake-
holders at all levels (Department of Tourism, 2006). The policy encourages con-
servation agencies to promote the involvement of local communities in
ecotourism and the formation of partnerships in ecotourism ventures between
communities, the private sector and conservation agencies. Malawi has four
wildlife reserves and five national parks. The study on which this paper is
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 7

based focuses on Liwonde National Park and Majete Wildlife Reserve. The two
protected areas are among the top wildlife tourism destinations in Malawi.
Liwonde National Park is a publicly managed protected area managed by the
Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) when data for this study
were being collected (African Parks took over the management of the park in
2015) and was proclaimed as a National Park in 1973 (DNPW, 1998). Majete
Wildlife Reserve was proclaimed as a protected area in 1955, and extended in
1969 and again 1976 (DNPW, 2000). The reserve was under the DNPW man-
agement until 2003 when the Government of Malawi entered into a 25-year
partnership with African Parks, a not-for-profit organisation, to manage, reha-
bilitate and develop the reserve.

Methodology
The study on which this paper is based focuses on participants’ perspectives on
factors that limit local communities’ participation in protected area-based
tourism planning. Consequently, a qualitative research approach was used, as
it allowed a full exploration of participants’ perspectives on the issue under
investigation (Flick, 2007) and examination of meanings attributed by partici-
pants to these issues (Creswell, 2007). This study used both in-depth interviews
and focus group discussions.
Purposive and snowball sampling procedures were used to select participants
for this study between June and September 2013. Purposive sampling provided
the opportunity for the researcher to identify participants from whom a great
deal of information and issues of central importance to the study was likely to
be collected (Patton, 2002; Marshall & Rossman, 2011). The snowball sampling
procedure involved obtaining information from personal contacts within each
institution and village about potential participants. New participants accumu-
lated, as more people were asked for their recommendations.
The study participants were drawn from Community-Based Organisations
(CBOs) and Village Natural Resource Committees (VNRCs) surrounding
Majete Wildlife Reserve and Liwonde National Park, respectively. Key infor-
mants from tourism businesses, protected area management agencies, govern-
ment departments and NGOs were identified locally and from further afield.
A CBO or a VNRC is a Group Village Headman-level committee responsible
for coordinating natural resource management and developmental activities
on behalf of the villages under the Group Village Headman. Majete has 19
CBOs while Liwonde has 32 VNRCs and membership is open to all villagers.
Three CBOs and three VNRCs were selected for this study.
A total of 64 people (refer to Table 1) participated in the study (forty in indi-
vidual interviews and 24 in focus group discussions). Out of the 40 interviewees,
10 were local villagers from CBOs around Majete, 7 were local villagers from
VNRCs around Liwonde, 3 were from African Parks’ staff at Majete, 6 were
8 F. G. BELLO ET AL.

Table 1. Number of participants per stakeholder group.

Stakeholder group Male Female Total number of participants
Local communities 30 11 41
Protected area management agencies (DNPW and African Parks) 8 1 9
Department of Tourism (DoT) 4 0 4
Tourism businesses 5 1 6
NGOs 4 0 4
Total 51 13 64

DNPW officers, 4 were Department of Tourism officers, 4 were participants

from NGOs and 6 were from tourism businesses. One focus group discussion
involving 6 local people from 1 CBO was conducted at Majete and 3 focus
group discussions (6 people each group) with local people from VNRCs were
conducted at Liwonde.
Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data from the interviews and focus
group discussions. The analysis involved transcription of all the interviews, gen-
eration of codes, searching for themes, reviewing of themes, defining and
naming of themes and production of a report (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The
coding was both literature-influenced and data-driven. Descriptive coding was
used where labels were assigned to data extracts to summarise in a word or
phrase any emerging pattern (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014). All the
codes were sorted into potential themes and sub-themes and checked against
each other with respect to the original data set.

Findings and discussion

From the data analysis, nine themes emerged indicative of a range of significant
limiting factors affecting community participation in ecotourism planning pro-
cesses associated with protected areas in Malawi. These are apathy, inadequate
financial resources, inadequate information, low education levels, unfair distri-
bution of benefits, lack of trained human resource, centralised public adminis-
tration, lack of coordination and human–wildlife conflicts.

Apathy

The findings reveal that most local people are not interested in being involved in
protected area management and ecotourism planning activities. CBOs and
VNRCs used to facilitate the engagement of protected area management
agencies with local people in protected area management activities are well
received by local people whenever they are established, but with time, local
people’s interest in attending to activities associated with the community organ-
isations and the protected area management agencies declines. The local people
become apathetic due to a number of reasons. It was explained by participants
that the lack of interest in ecotourism planning activities is mainly due to lack of
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 9

information about the importance of their participation and lack of meaningful

engagement in the planning processes by the management agencies.
… our local community organisation which is a tool for our participation has not yet
been used to its full potential and most issues which we raised years back concerning
our needs haven’t yet been addressed by park management. We need to clearly see
some benefits from our continued participation … We therefore prioritise our usual
farming and fishing errands to fend for our families and as a result only very few
people now go to protected area based tourism planning meetings. (Participant 24 –
Local Community)

With an exception of a few people, the participation of most people is at times erratic.
Most people are always busy in their gardens to fend for their families … It’s a process;
we believe that when they start understanding that their participation in tourism is
valuable, participation levels and commitment will also improve. (Participant 21 –
African Parks)

Most local people’s participation in either conservation or ecotourism plan-

ning-related activities associated with both protected areas has been inconsist-
ent, as local people mostly prioritise activities which immediately meet their
basic survival needs. Apathy is an often-cited problem of public participation
and in most cases, time commitment and personal circumstances limit local
people’s ability to participate (Booth & Halseth, 2011). Lachapelle, McCool,
and Patterson (2003, p. 487) observe that public apathy ‘may be derived from
a sense of cynicism, disenchantment, or lack of trust, leading to the belief that
agencies don’t acknowledge, hear, or honor what the public say’. But, as noted
by Wahab (1997), the problem of apathy is more pronounced in developing
countries where local people are preoccupied with basic survival activities.

Inadequate financial resources

The participation of local communities in the ecotourism planning processes

associated with protected areas was viewed as an expensive exercise by the
majority of participants from all stakeholder groups. It was explained by a par-
ticipant from DNPW that for their department to reach out to communities sur-
rounding protected areas, it requires a lot of resources. He argued that DNPW is
poorly funded by government to adequately involve all stakeholders during the
planning process.
… it is largely the limited financial resources which we get as a park which is not
enough for the community tourism planning process … So we end up taking the go
alone approach. For officers to move around the park to meet communities or to
ask community representatives to come here for consultative meetings, we need
money which is never there. (Participant 26 – DNPW)

In the first place, they [local people] expect payments or per diems. You will find him
[a local person] even at home, at his house, you discuss with him for maybe one hour
and when you are leaving he is expecting that you are going to pay him something, an
10 F. G. BELLO ET AL.

allowance for giving you that information. When you also invite them anytime, they
expect allowances, so that is the biggest challenge that all the time you are out there
to engage local people, they expect to be paid. (Participant 8 – NGO)

As noted by Hall (2008) and Tosun (2000), community participation either in

a developed or in a developing country is an expensive process, as it requires time,
money and skills to organise and sustain participation. Due to limited financial
resources, the protected area management agencies have limited manpower
and related equipment such as vehicles to reach out to all local communities
that surround the protected areas to sustain the participation process. The finan-
cial problems are more pronounced at Liwonde, a publicly managed national
park than at Majete, a privately managed wildlife reserve. As indicated by
Tosun (2000), most public bodies would not want to spend their limited financial
resources on community participation programmes. DNPW finds itself in this
situation due to inadequate government funding. Furthermore, local community
participants explained that they always find it a challenge to attend consultative
meetings held away from their villages, as they cannot meet the transport costs.
As a result, there is always an expectation from the local people that travel costs
for any of their representatives should be taken care of by management agencies
whenever there is an ecotourism planning consultative meeting.

Inadequate tourism information

Local community participants acknowledged that local people are not well
informed about ecotourism development issues. Participants from NGOs also
agreed, noting that more emphasis has been put on conservation (rather than
on tourism) when involving local people in various protected area management
issues. The local communities’ lack of understanding of ecotourism due to
inadequate tourism information from management agencies, government and
NGOs has deterred most people from participating in ecotourism planning
activities associated with the protected areas.
There isn’t much we know about tourism apart from the vehicles with white people
going into the park to see wildlife. What Park officials have been saying over the
past years is to encourage us to conserve the park. We would also want to be involved
in several tourism development activities … (Participant 25 – Local Community)

NGOs working in the wildlife sector and tourism associated with the protected areas
are quite few. The few of us … have mostly put our efforts in terms of awareness and
building capacity more on wildlife conservation than tourism development … For
tourism, there is very little readily available information which can be used for our
awareness programmes. (Participant 8 – NGO)

As observed by local community leaders around the protected areas, the low
level of education among local people surrounding protected areas also contrib-
utes to their lack of understanding of the ecotourism development planning
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 11

process, thereby limiting their participation. This confirms the findings of

Marzuki et al. (2012) and Tosun (2000). As suggested by Cole (2006) and
Hampton (2005), local communities need adequate knowledge about ecotour-
ism to be empowered and effectively engaged in ecotourism development pro-
cesses. Local communities around the two protected areas want the protected
area management agencies to be more transparent and provide more infor-
mation on their operations and educate them about the ecotourism development
processes. But the limited number of NGOs working in the wildlife and ecotour-
ism sectors which are expected to champion tourism civic education and build
capacity of local communities further compounds the problem of limited access
to tourism information. This echoes Saufi et al.’s (2014) findings in Indonesia
where stakeholders were inactive in educating local people about tourism.

Low education levels

Linked to the challenge of inadequate ecotourism information, the majority of
participants from all groups observed that most of the local people around pro-
tected areas are not well educated and that affects their understanding of new
things introduced to them, including participating in ecotourism. Most of the
adult population surrounding the two protected areas has not gone past
primary school education. For example, in Chikwawa and Machinga districts
where the two study sites are located, 66.4% and 87.4% of people above 15
years, respectively, have not gone beyond primary school education (NSO, 2012).
A participant from one of the villages argued that it might take some time for
the local communities to understand the importance of their participation in
ecotourism planning. She commented:
Most people here don’t value school much – as a result most of us are uneducated and
those who have gone to school haven’t gone far with it. So it becomes hard to ask
people to get engaged in new things such as tourism. It might take time to convince
people to have interest in participating in tourism issues. People here have associated
tourism mainly with white people. As a people we would rather continue with fishing
and farming. (Participant 23 – Local Community)

It was also explained by a participant from the Department of Tourism (DoT),

that in most cases, local communities are sidelined in the ecotourism planning
process, as ‘they can’t understand the dynamics of tourism development due to
their low levels of education’ (Participant 4 – DoT). This view was shared by par-
ticipants from DNPW and African Parks who claimed that, in most cases, local
communities are just informed of proposed ecotourism developments, as they are
perceived not to be knowledgeable enough to understand ecotourism planning
issues. As indicated by Marzuki et al. (2012), low education levels among local
people contribute to their lack of understanding of ecotourism issues, thereby
constraining their participation in tourism development planning.
12 F. G. BELLO ET AL.

Unfair distribution of benefits

Maximising ecotourism benefits that accrue to local people is one of the argu-
ments which is advanced in support of local community participation in eco-
tourism planning (Scheyvens, 1999; Su & Wall, 2014). Protected area
management agencies put forward potential ecotourism benefits as an incentive
to attract local people to participate in conservation and ecotourism develop-
ment planning activities. It is evident from this study, however, that the per-
ceived unfair distribution of, and lack of access to ecotourism benefits, is now
discouraging some local communities from continuing to engage in protected
area management and ecotourism planning activities.
Most participants from villages surrounding both protected areas explained
that unfair distribution and lack of benefits to local communities around pro-
tected areas have been major constraints to their participation in ecotourism
planning. One villager from Liwonde explained:
… we were told that we will be benefiting in different ways from tourism development
and resource use. But up to now, I can challenge you to go around this whole village
and ask if anyone is benefitting from the park. Nobody is benefitting from this park, so
for us it doesn’t make sense to spend our time to be discussing issues with park officials
on tourism planning activities associated with this park. (Participant 24 – Local
Community)

… this park is surrounded by a very huge population and though we employ a good
number of locals from the surrounding villages and have initiated some development
projects in some communities; these will never satisfy the villagers. Most villagers still
say they are not benefiting from the tourism development in the park. There is need for
us stakeholders to come up with a working model on how the tourism benefits can
somehow be distributed fairly to the communities … With the very high population,
you cannot even talk of letting the local people to start harvesting some selected
natural resources from the park; it will be depleted in just weeks. (Participant 32 –
Tourism operator)

The lack of interest amongst local communities towards participation in pro-

tected area management activities is becoming more pronounced due to their
restricted access to natural resources. It has been the wish of local people
around the protected areas to utilise some of the natural resources in the
parks or reserves for their livelihood, but they are either denied this or only
allowed to harvest very limited resources such as grass and firewood. Tradition-
ally, the local people around the protected areas have largely depended on
natural resources in the protected areas; hence, limited or no access severely
affects their livelihoods. Although the local communities have been promised
various alternative livelihoods (e.g. through ecotourism), as noted above, not a
great deal has yet been achieved. Though this is the case, some local people
around the protected areas benefit from ecotourism through employment, but
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 13

‘the high population densities preclude the majority of people benefitting

directly from ecotourism’ (Snyman, 2013, p. 652).

Lack of trained human resource in tourism planning

All the participants from protected area management agencies and the private
tourism operators agreed that ecotourism is one of the major sources of
revenue for protected area management and community development in
Malawi. With ecotourism being regarded so highly as a source of revenue, it
would be appropriate for the protected area management agencies to have
staff who are trained in ecotourism planning to take a leading role in the pro-
tected area-based tourism planning. However, it was observed that the protected
area management agencies only have conservation and wildlife management
experts and no experts or trained personnel in ecotourism planning.
Participants from African Parks indicated that the lack of ecotourism plan-
ners at Majete has hampered the participation of local communities in the eco-
tourism planning process, as much of the community participation work is done
by personnel trained in other fields, such as environmental education.
On having tourism development in the park, that’s an agreed principle but how that is
done is another issue. Though we don’t have tourism development experts here, we
have managed to get some external guidance from our headquarters [in South
Africa]. We use our community conservation knowledge when involving local
people on tourism development. We understand that community conservation and
community tourism planning are different but we have no choice but to move on.
(Participant 21 – African Parks)

… you know this country as most countries in this part of Africa lack experts in most
fields including conservation and tourism planning. That is why most of our tourism
plans or strategies and protected area management plans are mostly done by foreign
experts. With these foreign consultants you can’t expect any meaningful community
participation. Local community’s participation in any process needs time. There is
need for local experts to champion people’s participation in tourism development pro-
cesses (Participant 30 – Tourism operator)

To date, the protected area management agencies in Malawi have mostly

relied on foreign expertise to carry out the planning for protected areas
(DNPW, 1998; Malawi Government, 2005). As a result, the agencies have
mainly been concerned with the output of such processes rather than the objec-
tives. This eventually affects local community participation in ecotourism plan-
ning processes associated with the protected areas as the foreign consultants’
focus is mainly on producing a management plan within the agreed timeframe
regardless of which stakeholders are involved during the process (DNPW, 1998;
Malawi Government, 2005). As a result, local communities tend to be ignored in
the processes or are only informed of the planning process. For example, the
production of the 1998 General Management Plan for Liwonde National Park
14 F. G. BELLO ET AL.

and the Draft Liwonde – Mangochi protected area complex general management
plan 2005–2015 was led by foreign consultants, and local communities were not
considered as a major stakeholder to be involved in the planning process
(DNPW, 1998; Malawi Government, 2005). The lack of ‘in-house’ expertise in
ecotourism planning has been a significant barrier to community participation
in ecotourism development planning processes associated with protected areas
in Malawi, a finding that supports the view that this is a problem across most
developing countries (Tosun, 2000).
It was further observed by a participant from an NGO that most professionals
in the protected area management agencies are ‘over-confident with themselves
and have had no close contact with local people since the participatory approach
in planning is new to most of them’ (Participant 6 – NGO). As a result, it has
been hard for most of these professionals to accept the participatory ecotourism
development approach. Many technocrats in the protected area management
agencies are unwilling to fully embrace community participation in ecotourism
planning, as they regard ecotourism planning as being highly technical, such that
local people would not make any meaningful contribution to the process.

Centralised public administration of protected areas and tourism

The majority of participants from tourism businesses, DNPW and the Depart-
ment of Tourism explained that the public administration of protected areas and
tourism still remains highly centralised. Though both DNPW and the Depart-
ment of Tourism have divisional and regional offices, respectively, these have
no tourism planning decision-making powers. According to one participant
from DNPW, ‘the involvement of local communities in protected area manage-
ment related activities is greatly affected by the bureaucracy in the centralised
public administration system’ (Participant 27 – DNPW). He further explained
that funding for Liwonde National Park is centrally controlled and it usually
takes a long time for DNPW headquarters to make decisions that affect the
parks’ interface with local communities. This echoes Novelli and Scarth’s
(2007) point that the management at Liwonde National Park has very little
decision-making powers and that any decision to be made is constrained by a
set of bureaucratic layers in DNPW.
Most of the participants explained that the participatory ecotourism develop-
ment approach could have been better implemented if both the Department of
Tourism and DNPW were fully decentralised.
I wish this tourism work was broken down into districts whereby the districts them-
selves take on board some of these issues because doing it from headquarters … is
very difficult. Our mandates are just too diverse and we are thin on the ground and
lack resources. If it was decentralised, one of the things that we should have been
doing as a district tourism office is awareness, talking to communities and what
have you. But we are heavily challenged in that area. (Participant 29 – DoT)
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 15

I wish we could have a tourism office nearby within the district. Whenever I have an
issue with my business which needs the attention of the government, I have to travel to
the regional office in Blantyre where most of the times they refer me to headquarters in
Lilongwe. So what I want to point at is that we have no tourism officials who can inter-
act with local people around this park in any tourism development processes. So the
unavailability of tourism officers in our district defeats the whole process of commu-
nity tourism planning. We need tourism offices in districts with tourism destinations
like this park to be interfacing with local people on issues to do with tourism on a
regular basis. (Participant 32 – Tourism operator)

Despite the Malawi government adopting a Decentralisation Policy in 1998

which advocates the devolution of administrative and political authority to
the district level, the policy has been implemented to various extents in different
sectors. As indicated by participants from DNPW and Department of Tourism,
both wildlife management and tourism in Malawi have yet to be devolved to
local district councils. Though the Decentralisation Policy designates district
councils as a planning authority, wildlife reserves and national parks were not
assigned to the authority of district councils. It should be noted that despite
the pressures from international development agencies and the neoliberal
agenda advocating for decentralisation, the process faces many challenges and
the culture of centralisation still remains strongly embedded in many African
countries including Malawi (Smoke, 2003).

Lack of policy and planning coordination

The findings reveal a lack of coordination amongst various interested stake-

holders during the protected area ecotourism planning process. At the national
level, the two main departments, the Department of Tourism and DNPW which
are responsible for tourism and protected areas, respectively, do not collaborate
in ecotourism planning associated with protected areas. It was noted that
DNPW has not directly involved the Department of Tourism in the develop-
ment of any protected area management plan, though they are an important
stakeholder.
The lack of coordination in ecotourism planning-related activities associated
with protected areas extends to NGOs with an interest in wildlife conservation
and protected area-based tourism. The lack of coordination of programmes by
these organisations is further compounded by the centralised public adminis-
tration, as explained by a participant from an NGO:
As NGOs, we find ourselves several times doing the same things in one area without
any coordination. Other NGOs working on issues not directly related to the environ-
ment also work in the same communities as we do and we at times do similar pro-
grammes. So, you will find that we go there today and the other day it’s another
NGO going and maybe the messages are sometimes antagonising, sometimes the
same … Local people get confused and become less interested with our work … The
officials at district councils know about these projects but there are no DNPW officers
16 F. G. BELLO ET AL.

at district council level to provide the necessary advice on how works by different
NGOs in areas surrounding parks can be coordinated to support protected area man-
agement activities. (Participant 42 – NGO)

The lack of coordination amongst government departments, NGOs and other

local-based organisations with an interest in ecotourism planning associated
with protected areas has greatly affected the participation of local communities
in the planning processes. Since time is a valuable resource in the lives of local
people, the more NGOs ask communities to participate in similar activities, the
less interested they become in taking part in any form of participatory develop-
ment approach. As tourism in most developing countries is highly fragmented
(Haywood, 1988; Jamal & Getz, 1995), it is essential to develop coordination
mechanisms among stakeholders to leverage different resources in the tourism
planning process.

Human–wildlife conflicts

Most participants indicated that human–wildlife conflicts are a very big problem
in most protected areas in the country. They indicated that at Liwonde National
Park, the human–wildlife conflicts are more pronounced than in other wildlife-
protected areas in the country and such conflicts affect DNPW’s efforts to involve
the local communities in any activity related to the park. The human–wildlife
conflict manifests itself in a number of forms including crop raiding, destruction
of property and attacks on people. As indicated by a participant from DNPW:
The initiative of community participation or harmonising the relationship between the
communities and the protected areas gets defeated by human-wildlife conflicts … how
can you ask an aggrieved person to say come and work with us and yet his or her crops
or property have been destroyed by the wildlife which you are responsible in mana-
ging. At times people get killed by elephants or you have houses for several households
destroyed by elephants. These incidents frequently happen around Liwonde National
Park and our efforts to engage communities get defeated due to the anger and discom-
fort caused by the wildlife. (Participant 5 – DNPW)

Subsequently, the local communities around protected areas are mostly antag-
onistic towards government officials and park management following instances
of wildlife destroying their crops or property, or injuring or killing people. The
legislation and regulatory framework on wildlife management in Malawi have
no provisions for any compensation to local people whenever there is loss of
crops, property or life as a result of human–wildlife conflict. As a result, whenever
such incidents happen, the affected households are helpless and generally antag-
onistic and uncooperative towards protected area management authorities. In
this regard, in the interest of fostering better relationships with locals, protected
area management agencies, government and other stakeholders need to find
long-term solutions to minimise or mitigate human–wildlife conflict.
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 17

Conclusion
The contribution of this paper to community participation in ecotourism devel-
opment processes is twofold. It corroborates the findings of the limited studies
from other parts of the developing world that also identify profound limitations
of community participation in ecotourism planning and development processes
(e.g. Marzuki et al., 2012; Saufi et al., 2014; Tosun, 2000). The paper further adds
to this body of work by identifying constraints to local community participation
in ecotourism development planning associated with protected areas within a
southern African setting. If we are going to continue to support the notion
that community participation enhances sustainable outcomes, we need to
accept and advocate the idea that solutions to grow community participation
must be rooted in the local realities of community members’ lives. Such local
realities are dictated to not only by the time and resource poverty often associ-
ated with rural life in locations such as Malawi, but also by persistent structural
problems that hamper ecotourism planning processes and exacerbate commu-
nity alienation from such processes.
Although both wildlife and tourism policies at national Malawian level
acknowledge the need for local participation in ecotourism development pro-
cesses associated with protected areas, the extent of local people’s participation
in the ecotourism planning processes is limited. This paper has highlighted
several factors that hamper local communities’ participation in the ecotourism
planning process, including inadequate financial resources, centralisation of
tourism planning, lack of trained personnel in tourism planning, lack of coordi-
nation amongst key stakeholders, lack of adequate comprehensible tourism
information, low educational levels, human–wildlife conflicts and apathy.
The findings suggest the need for the continued advocacy for community par-
ticipation in ecotourism development processes in developing countries to
incorporate strategies which can facilitate local community participation.
Local communities living around and inside protected areas play an important
role in any ecotourism development and their participation in ecotourism plan-
ning is vital to the development and success of sustainable protected area-based
tourism (Cole, 2006; Tosun, 2006). Community participation is a Western
concept and as such, the conceptualisation of community involvement processes
fails to take into account the circumstances faced in many developing countries,
resulting in passive participation where people are only told what has been
decided or has already happened. Therefore, in addition to suggesting the
importance of community participation in tourism planning, the advocacy for
the concept should articulate the required actions to promote the process.
Depending on local factors, such strategies are expected to mitigate the costs
and maximise benefits of ecotourism, as well as improve the levels of local com-
munities’ participation in ecotourism planning to ensure sustainable tourism
development. Such strategies are prerequisites to achieving full and active
18 F. G. BELLO ET AL.

community participation and these include public awareness and education;

capacity building; creation of linkages; use of appropriate participation
methods; involvement of appropriate local community organisations; and
decentralisation and coordination of relevant management organisations
(Bello, Lovelock, & Carr, 2016).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID
Felix G. Bello http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7442-4768

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