Análisis descriptivo de las variables

According to Chapagain (2004), AI emphasises local people’s participation, capacity building and ownership for development through local resource mobilisation. It believes in local strengths (from human or natural resources), knowledge or skills, experiences or successes. Majority of the expert participants tended to agree that AI encourages

community participation in planning and implementation of tourism programmes. The AI process creates an environment for people in the community to share their ideas and provide their input in planning. For example, Tharke, one of the participants, thinks that AI encourages local people’s participation because it values their views and knowledge:

I think AI encourages community participation. It is human nature; if you are encouraged, you will definitely come and participate. If your views are appreciated by others, you will definitely be happy to express them. On the other hand, if you are not appreciated or always treated as a poor and unintelligible person, then you never become interested. Therefore, there is high participation while using AI; without participation this is not possible.

However, there are some critical issues that affect community participation. The role of outsiders as experts in the planning process is still prevalent. The findings from the fieldwork indicate that the participation of local people in planning process was not ‘spontaneous’, as mentioned in Tosun’s (1999) typology of community participation – the highest level of participation. Tharke commented that “the role of facilitator in the

planning exercise is important for local people’s participation” (as referred in Chapagain, 2009). Since there are still discrimination and different perceptions toward various social and economic groups in the society (as mentioned in Chapter 2), it is a challenging task to gather all those people in one place. Therefore, Tharke believes that a facilitator needs to have internalised the concept of AI and be able to understand the social and cultural context:

If you go to any village for any programme, mainly the people who have better socio-economic status will come to participate in the programme. Poor people do not come even if you invited them directly, this is because they think it is the business of ‘superior people’; they are discriminated against; no one listens to them, and nothing happens even if they show up. These thoughts still prevail in many communities.

Dambur also indicated that tourism was considered as a business of elite people in rural remote areas, and there was no access for the economically disadvantaged ones. The social and cultural context is one of the barriers in community participation. But based on the experience of using AI in tourism planning and implementation by TRPAP, Dambur believes that AI can be used to increase local people’s participation in the programmes:

AI can be one of the best tools for poor people's access in planning and development which was the main lesson learned from the TRPAP planning experience. In

Nepalese traditional tourism, poor and marginalised groups cannot dream. There was no environment for those people to dream about tourism development in the past. But AI encouraged local people to participate in the TRPAP programme. Local people participated in the Discovery, Dream, Design and Destiny stages. At the same time, AI process also improved the capacity of local people. So they understood the importance of programming and getting involved with different income generating activities such as handicraft production, portering, guiding, operating teashops and homestays etc.

‘Spontaneous participation’ as referred in Tosun’s (1999) typology can be met only when the degree of participation levels such as partnership, delegated power, and citizen control of Arnstein’s (1969) ladder are achieved. However, the role of local community is crucial to achieve the higher degree of participation. If local people are not interested and are not ready to take ownership of any programme, then any planning approach is destined to fail. Local communities do not support the planning process if the programmes are not thought beneficial to them as mentioned in Chapter 5. Kamal shared that the nature of the

programme determines the participation level of the local people. If the programme

addresses the need of the local people, then there will be better participation. He said, “The local community participation was quite good while using AI. However, the participation differs from place to place. If the community is going to benefit, they need to join and participate fully in the programme.”

Tosun (2006) illustrated that different interest groups expect different levels of

community participation in order to achieve their own goals, and these expectations may conflict with each other. Even in the same community, people living with better

economic conditions may have different interests and goals from other people. Therefore, the degree of community participation may differ from programme to programme.

Another participant, Gyalpo, expressed that people’s participation is crucial in

participatory approaches, including AI. However, he thinks that the level of participation differs based on the approach used in planning: “...the nature of participation depends upon the approaches. The PRA approach involves preparing a seasonal calendar, a

resource map etc to generate ideas and information and aims to identify the problems. But AI planning begins with people’s knowledge, interests, dreams, available resources, etc.”

While implementing any pro-poor programmes in rural areas, it is important to identify the beneficiaries. In this regard, experts had various views about poor people’s participation in different programmes. Gyalpo raised his concern on the concept of PPT in the context of Nepal. He commented that it is not clear as to who are poor and how to identify them. He thinks that there are different economic levels even among poor people:

People who live in geographically remote areas are comparatively poor. We understand that when we go to such communities with certain programmes, those programmes are pro-poor. All people do not have [the] same level of economic standard; there are extremes between poor and rich.

Gyalpo further explained the context of the communities in remote areas. People with better financial stability run lodges and teashops, and these people benefit more from tourism. The notion of PPT is to generate income to the poor people, but people with better economic standard among the poor people always take more benefit. Gyalpo indicated that the disadvantaged people in the society always lag behind to reap the benefit, an issue also referred to in the DFID report (1999b). According to Gyalpo, “Most of the local people who run lodges are economically better-off as compared to other people in the village. Therefore, it seems that the programmes run for pro-poor objectives mostly benefited rich people in poor communities.”

Dambur shared the lessons learned from TRPAP in the Rasuwa district that community awareness of tourism is important before implementing tourism projects in rural areas. He explained the constraints: “There were hesitations among poor people that think tourism is a business for the rich, so we had to conduct awareness programmes on tourism at the beginning.” Another participant, Mingphuti, also shared her experience with a TRPAP project. TRPAP supported economically disadvantaged people by providing skill

development training and loan support to start small businesses in their village. However, she said, “Local people continued such business effectively only when the project was running.” This shows that regular follow-ups are important.

Overall, the perspectives of expert participants indicate that AI can be a useful approach to involve local people in planning processes. It encourages the people’s participation in planning with the concept of appreciating local views and strengths. However, an AI approach does not necessarily increase the people’s participation in planning. There are various influencing factors, such as political, social and cultural context, benefit of the planning, and role of facilitators.