How much is too many? Tourists

The ministry of agriculture and the tourism council of Bhutan signed a memorandum of understanding to open protected areas for tourists. The idea is to diversify tourism and ensure that local community derives the benefit of the industry that generates the second highest income for the government, after hydropower.

The hope is that the signed documents will not gather dust on the shelves because, as intended, it is important for local communities, especially in the protected areas, to benefit from tourism. In Bhutan, although many government initiatives are intended to benefit people at the local level, it is hard to see benefits trickling down to them. Whether it is the handicraft industry or tourism, success is measured by the amount of US dollars contributed to government coffers. The rural girls, who are deft with handicrafts, are the lowest paid in the handicraft industry; so are the Layap carrying backbreaking loads and crossing snow covered passes.Like the agriculture minister, Lyonpo Dr Pema Gyamtsho, said, the benefits of tourism should move away from concentrating just to tour operators and their agents. If Bhutan is a favoured tourist destination, it is because of the well-preserved culture and tradition, the pristine environment and more recently, GNH. But it is the local people, who preserve our tradition, who sacrifice livestock and crops to protect the wild. How many tour operators know that the villages their rich tourists visit lose cattle and crops to wildlife every year?

In this light, it is only right that a local girl in Sakteng should benefit from tourists enjoying the livelihood they practised for centuries. The benefit should go beyond appearing on the cover of tourist magazines and company brochures.

GNH requires that the government create the right environment for people to find happiness. For communities in the protected areas, finding happiness is difficult when their only pair of oxen is killed by a tiger just before the transplantation season. Well-intended policies could make it easy to achieve GNH. If, for instance, a community benefits from tourism, it will not cut down trees in the catchment area, as they would have an alternate source of livelihood.

Even for the tourism industry, the opening would mean more tourists; and, for the government, another avenue to reach the 100,000 tourist mark by 2013. Tourists visiting Bhutan are already complaining of seeing more of their kind in one place. Be it the dzongs, festivals or the hotels, tourists are feeling that they are not the only privileged ones to visit Bhutan. By opening the protected areas, which makes about 51 percent of the country, even tourists would have more choice and escape fighting for space at a local tsechu.

Source: Kuensel