Local stakeholders and ecotourism
Over the past two decades, many developing countries have experienced large population increases with declining or stagnant economic conditions. These countries have frequently been pressured into exploiting their natural resource base in anunsustainable fashion in order to meet immediate economic needs and to pay interest on foreign debt. This combination leads more people to compete for fewer natural resources. Outside protected areas, the natural resources that many people have depended upon for sustenance and many businesses have relied upon for profit making have disappeared.
For most countries, protected areas have become the last significant pieces of land that still retain important reserves of plant and animal diversity, water, clean air and other ecological service. Meanwhile, protected areas have become increasingly attractive to farmers, miner, loggers and others trying to make a living. The economic development pressures on these areas have intensified on local, national and global scales. Thus, ecotourism has become very important for potentially reconciling conservation and economic considerations. Because of this competition for resources, conservationists realized that local people and economic circumstances must be incorporate into conservation strategies (redford and Mansour, 1996) in most cases, local people need financial incentives to use and manage natural resources sustainably. Existing economic and political conditions often limit their options and increase their reliance on natural areas. Conservation work often means creating alternatives to current economic practices so that multiple-use zone around protected areas can be maintained and threats to protected areas minimized