"Conservation, community development, rainforest experience: The environmental, social and economic values of forest canopy based ecotourism"
Organizers: Markus Seibel and Siddhartha Krishnan
For over 20 years now ecotourism has been understood as an approach to experience a resource like tropical forests sustainably. The aims of the ecotourism concept include benefits to conservation and local communities while avoiding negative ecological and socio-cultural effects. Another central aim of this approach is to raise environmental awareness in ecotourism destinations. And this is where ecotourism and canopy tourism are interconnected. Canopy tourism activities offer a special rainforest experience from a completely new perspective.
Therefore, the aim of the symposium is to blend together knowledge and experience from the fields of ecotourism and canopy tourism in approaching some of the following topics:
- “Lessons learned” from existing facilities/ projects: To what extent are local communities involved? How well is the interpretation of the surrounding ecosystem done? To what extent can canopy activities be considered a stand-alone ecotourism product?
- Review of existing models: grassroots vs. planned and implemented projects, private operators vs. public protected area management, tourism activity alone vs. combination of research and tourism…
- The Indian scenario: what is the potential of canopy ecotourism in India? Can it be a stand-alone product or will it rather have to be combined with other ecotourism activities? Which models exist?
To answer some of these questions, the conference seeks to bring together scientists and practitioners from around the world. A significant aspect and outcome of the symposium will be to discuss which framing conditions are necessary to make canopy tourism or a combination of canopy and other ecotourism activities a success. Success in this sense means implementing this tourism as a tool for biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation/ community development in general and in India.
List of speakers
Markus Seibel – India’s Landmark trees are the natural Ambassadors for Environmental Education.
Meg Lowman – Canopy Walkways for Conservation Education – A Tropical Biologist’s Panacea or Fuzzy Metrics to Justify Ecotourism.
Mohamed Shahwahid Haji Othman – Assessing the Contributions of Canopy Tourism to National Parks
Phil Wittman – Canopy Access Construction Methods
Robbie Oates – The First Canopy Walkway System in India – The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Initiative.
Saroop Roy – Canopy Tourism: Concept and Practices in the Indian context.
Smriti Kumari - Identification and Prioritisation of Potential Ecotourism Sites in West District, Sikkim
Stephen Michael Turton - Evolution of canopy ecotourism in Australia: experiences from the land down under
Suchismita Das – Consensus Building in Ecotourism: Concepts and Contradictions
Technical session will be followed by an open house – to facilitate interactions between entrepreneurs with the experts. This will be lead by Dr. Balachander Ganesan, Former representative of Ford Foundation.
source:Nathistory
Date- 30-10-2009
Phone: +91-80-23635555 Fax: +91-80-23530070 www.canopy2009.org
Email: secretary @canopy2009.org
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