CORP – Competence Center of Urban and Regional Planning
Doi
Abstract
Tourism is one of the most important sources of national & international income in the World. One type
which has the potential to contribute to the sustainable development of local communities and alleviation of
poverty levels is Ecotourism. Ecotourism implies responsibility to the environment, resident communities,
and a duty to respect, invest, and develop local cultures. This definition not only suggets that there should be
a recognition of and positive support for the conservation of natural resources, both by suppliers and
consumers, but also that there is a necessary social dimension to ecotourism. The term ‘community-based
ecotourism’ (CBET) takes this social dimension a stage further. This is a planning paradigm where the local
community has substantial control over, and involvement in its development and management, and a major
proportion of the benefits remain within the community. CBET is considered the logical link between the
environment, the local community, and the tourism industry. It has become the newest planning process
approach in tourism development, devised to support community involvement, improve their living
standards and protect natural resources which is the main current problem resulting from the mass tourism
industry in Egypt. Since 2002, also the year when eco-tourism was internationally promoted by the UN the
Egyptian government began to seek new strategies and plans to actively support the participation of local
communities in ecotourism development initiatives in Egypt’s rich biodiversity and numerous protected
areas. However, the actual implementation of involving communities in decision making is poorly achieved,
which impacted negatively on the effectiveness and sustainability of these initiatives. This paper proposes an
integrated community-based ecotourism framework. This was done through a theoretical study of the main
principles and stratergies of community ecotourism that have been successfully applied in developing
countries by using the Egyptian protected areas classifications which determine the applicable community
participation types for effectively involving local communities in protected areas. Subsequently the
framework can be applied to specific destinations and recommend action points for their development
according to each area‘s needs and variable circumstances. Once developed, this integrated planning tool can
be used to devise a local urban development plan by the local government and other organisations in
protected areas to improve the physical and social environments and to create a better understanding of the
relationship between tourism and community