Community-based indigenous tourism, NGOs and indigenous poverty in Bangladesh

Abstract

Indigenous peoples, with unique cultures and ways of life, often constitute the most vulnerable groups of society and may experience discrimination and marginalisation in many forms. Observing the growing quest to obtain first-hand experiences of indigenous cultures and lifestyles, many indigenous communities around the world have embraced tourism as a way forward for their socio-economic development, primarily to address their poverty. This is evident in the increasing focus on community-based tourism (CBT), indigenous tourism and their application together. Concomitantly, many development-oriented organisations, i.e. donors and NGOs, have incorporated tourism as an additional means of development, explicitly emphasising the inclusion of indigenous and/or host communities within the formal tourism economy. However, the outcomes of such involvement and interventions are sometimes questionable and previous studies in this regard have proved inconclusive, especially in the context of indigenous poverty alleviation in developing countries. This study thus aims to investigate the role of NGOs in alleviating rural indigenous poverty through the facilitation of community-based indigenous tourism (CBIT) involvement in a developing country context - Bangladesh.

Fitting into the domain of critical theory, a qualitative case study approach was adopted where multiple methods, including semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and observations, were employed to collect empirical evidence from two indigenous communities in Bangladesh. Following this a thematic analysis was applied in analysing the qualitative data collected and developing the key findings.

Findings show that NGO-facilitated tourism involvement has created some economic opportunities (e.g. income and employment, access to credit) that are limited in amount but significant considering the marginal conditions of the communities. Such involvement was to some extent also found to be contributing to the empowerment and reduced economic vulnerability of the communities. Simultaneously, the findings show that these benefits come along with several costs (e.g. creating external dependency, invasion of indigenous privacy, the threat of displacement) that overshadow the positive gains in many cases. The study reveals a dynamic interplay of multidimensional empowerment aspects moving beyond the mere economic aspect. While investigating the research issue, the findings observed a high interdependency between opportunity, empowerment and security. The thesis also examines a range of factors that restrict the indigenous communities (e.g. tensions, seasonality, market constraints, macro-environmental effects) and NGOs (e.g. strategic limitations and activity constraints) in operationalising tourism benefits. Finally, based on the empirical evidence and considering the existence of a development gap, the study concludes that NGO-facilitated tourism involvement (both direct and indirect) can make a contribution to indigenous poverty alleviation; however, this could best be viewed as an additional tool rather than an alternative tool to their traditional livelihood practices.

This thesis contributes to the broader discussion of externally-facilitated tourism involvement for indigenous communities, as well as to the debate over the tourism-indigenous poverty nexus from such involvement. In doing so, the thesis reflects a combination of theoretical, conceptual and methodological contributions with associated practical implications. It incorporates the understanding of the key elements of stakeholder identification and salience theory (power, legitimacy and urgency) along with the poverty alleviation determinants (opportunity, empowerment and security) from the anti-poverty tourism research framework. The study demonstrates the utility of this conjoined conceptual approach that provides a conceptual schema to facilitate and extend our current understanding of the NGO-tourism-indigenous poverty nexus. The thesis also adds to our current understanding of community-based tourism from a non-western research perspective, and revealing the challenges and related opportunities in the conducting of research with indigenous communities, and by non-indigenous researchers.