Tourism Value Chains: Conservation International’s Innovative Approach

1. Tourism Value Chains: Conservation International’s Innovative Approach An innovative approach to economic growth, poverty reduction and creating business incentives to conserve biodiversity

2. Ecotourism Program: Who are We? • Ecotourism Program; PPC or Conservation Strategies • Travel & Leisure; CELB • Global Tourism Team Ecotourism Program Neel Inamdar, Senior Advisor of Ecotourism Program Nina Kolbe, Sustainable Tourism Development Advisor Kathryn Kelly, Manager of Ecotourism Program CELB Jamie Sweeting Senior Director of Travel & Leisure Seleni Matus Advisor to MesoAmerican Reef Rebecca Rogers Coordinator of Travel of Leisure Global Tourism Team: over 20 CI staff around the world

3. Ecotourism at CI Historically CI has engaged in tourism through the following: • Community Engagement • Enterprise/Destination Development • Policy and Planning • Capacity Building

4. Ecotourism Today Increasingly CI is engaging with the private sector to implement sustainable tourism practices across their supply chains. • Partnership with ATTA; to disseminate good practice guidelines to tour operators. • Partnerships with cruise line associations • Hotel Siting, Development and Design guideline • Partnership with Responsible Travel to promote sustainable tourism operations

5. Madagascar 3 year project, funded by USAID working in two biodiversity corridors. Objective: Working with partners at the local, national and international levels, CI aims to increase the competitiveness of micro and small enterprise (MSE) in the tourism industry in Madagascar.

6. Good Practice Adoption 2 year project, funded by UNEP-GEF, implementation in 2 regions of Ecuador and one in Belize. Entitled “Mainstreaming Biodiversity Conservation into Tourism Through the Development and Dissemination of Best Practices,” the two-year project will support sustainable tourism and conservation by developing and implementing best practice adoption.

7. Tourism Learning Initiative OLD MODEL LEARNING MODEL Headquarters Headquarters

8. Key Learning Themes Themes • Protected Areas • Value Chain Analysis • Concessions Learning Activities Case Studies, South-South Exchanges, Technical Support Trips, etc.

9. Learning Activities FY07 Gudaigwa Case Study The Gudaigwa Cultural Village Eco-tourism project, located in northern Botswana was a 7 year project led by CI and partners. It is considered by CI and a wider audience to have failed in its objective of establishing of a viable, sustainable and profitable community based tourism enterprise during the time which CI was involved. CI’s Tourism staff wanted to learn from this failed project so S. Africa staff produced a case study to unveil the errors during implementation of this project.

10. Learning Activities FY07 Canaima, Venezuela Technical Support Trip Tourism staff from CI-Ecuador (Salvador Cazar and Steve Edwards), CI-Venezuela (Daniela Vizcaino) and Headquarters (Neel Inamdar) • Create and test a model for technical support within the CI Global Tourism Team under the Institutional Learning Initiative • 2. Support the Venezuela country program addressing identified issues related to Canaima National Park, in particular the challenges faced by the Tourism Standards Project (Ecoparador and the Tourism Master Plan)

11. What we learned at the workshop • CI & Ecotourism Programs’ Learning Initiatives • Tourism Value Chain Analysis • Using TVC Project Cycle to guide through process • How to decide between ecotourism and other value chains • How to do Value Chain Analysis • How to develop strategy • How to design effective implementation plan • How to monitor performance and assess impact

12. Value Chain Analysis:What is it? Value chain analysis focuses on the dynamics of inter-linkages within the productive sector, especially the way in which firms and countries are globally integrated

13. What is a Value Chain & Why has the tourism program adopted VCA? The full range of activities that are value- enhancing and go into bringing a product or service to market. • This concept has been extended beyond individual organizations & can be applied to whole supply chains and distribution networks. • This enables the tourism program to understand the flow of inputs, processes, relationships, and costs to evaluate if tourism is a viable economic activity • VCA- based project cycle supports the development of a competitiveness strategy that will enable sustainable tourism activities to provide local benefits and funding for conservation

14. Why is it useful/ relevant in tourism and conservation work The principle objectives for utilizing tourism in conservation are summarized as[1]: To finance conservation • Concessions, user fees, trust funds etc. To reduce negative impacts on biodiversity • Planning, managing, assessing, monitoring and sharing • Policy, legal framework, regulations and agreements • Standards, guidelines and best practices (communities, private sector, protected areas, visitor management) As a sustainable economic activity • Alternative livelihoods • Entrepreneurial capacity (communities & private sector) • Enabling Environments To create constituencies for conservation • Community, NGO, government and business engagement • Partnerships and alliances • Capacity building, education / interpretation In order for tourism to be able to achieve the objectives listed above, it needs to be a viable economic activity -- and to determine if it is viable, you need a diagnostic tool… [1] 2006 CI Tourism Strategy meeting in Costa Rica

15. The Value Chain Framework in Tourism

17. Using the TVC Project Cycle to Guide You Through this Process Economic benefits from tourism, including using tourism receipts to fund conservation depends on sustainable tourism activity Economically viable tourism activities in the long-run depend on strategy development We use the value chain project cycle to develop the strategies Successful competitiveness depends on capacity to innovate and improve Your role: Facilitate strategic change in tourism sectors

18. The Nature-Based Tourism Value Chain Project Cycle serves as the framework for designing competitive, sustainable tourism projects CI uses these five stages of a nature-based tourism value chain project cycle to systematically develop comprehensive and effective strategies to increase the business incentives to conserve biodiversity. This allows us to: • Engage in tourism in a systematic way • Ensure that the private sector is driving the process • Utilize end-market information to inform upgrading strategies • Diagnose and evaluate constraints and opportunities • Prioritize addressing the key constraints with stakeholders • Design interventions that are both high-impact and sustainable • Develop multi-year strategies with stakeholders to sustain competitiveness • Monitor performance and assess impact of tourism on conservation by clearly linking tourism activities to conservation efforts In essence, it is a uniform methodology that is replicable and clearly delineates how and why interventions are chosen. The interventions are prioritized by the stakeholders and are decided only after a thorough value chain analysis, including benchmarking key determinants of success, is completed.