The Mekong Discovery Trail: Public education & awareness raising, training and research

Sunset from Kratie riverfront

The UNWTO Mekong Discovery Trail: a destination development, Heritage Trail Project that encompasses themes of Community Based Ecotourism, wildlife viewing tourism (in the case of the critically endangered Mekong (Irrawaddy) Dolphin and Stung Treng Ramsar site), private sector training, local government capacity building as well as setting up a system of trails throughout both of the rural provinces involved.  In many cases there are much similarities with this project and my first post-Master's Degree work on Hadrian's Wall Path in the UK, where I worked on many sub-trails of the main route, all designed as a rural development project.

Trail Map - click to enlarge

Other similarities include the destination being one of the areas least visited by "tourists" (2% of international visitors to Cambodia visit the provinces, many passing through on-route from the popular 4,000 islands destination in Southern Laos to the gem of Cambodia - the Temples of Angkor, I forget the exact figure pre-project for Hadrian's Wall); government involvement and the multi-stakeholder approach.  There similarities end, for Hadrian's wall we put considerable emphasis on physical trail infrastructure and used local Chambers of Commerce to help develop business links, local business marketing support and the private sector to develop trail guides etc.

The Mekong Discovery Trail focuses much on training and support to existing tourism related businesses with a focus on using guides over independent visits.  Interestingly the trail is not actually a single trail, rather a collection of routes (either walking, cycling, motorbike, boating or a combination) based from regional "capitals" of Kratie and Stung Treng that encompasses both project supported Community Based Ecotourism communities and the town areas.  

Kratie sunsets are a main attraction

So why develop a project in this location?  Three main reasons:  Firstly the area is relatively poor, with much of the population living on subsistence agriculture and river based fishing, all of which have conservation impacts on the river (and the dolphins, of which only around 120 remain in Cambodia), secondly Cambodia is seeking to diversify it's tourism industry after the Temples of Angkor and the beaches of Sihanoukville, and thirdly, the target area is on a rapidly developing tourist route for independent travellers in South East Asia, with upwards of 100,000 visitors a year visiting southern Lao and many passing through the target areas on-route to other Cambodian destinations.  The main challenge being to encourage these visitors to stop in either Stung Treng or Kratie Provinces for a few days and the hope they will develop into a destination in themselves.

Rarely can a critically endangered species be seen so easily

Indeed it is a challenge, especially as transport becomes increasingly straightforward, with good roads, reliable and safe bus travel and generally easy visa systems.  The Mekong Discovery Trail effectively competes with other destinations in the region that are more developed and have more impacting scenery (the landscape at this point is largely flat).  Though the area does have many charms, it will never be a primary destination.

The trail project is not stand alone.  It seeks to draw upon support and previous work done by NGOs in the region, especially Mlup Baitong and Cambodian Rural Development Team, who both have developed models of Community Based Ecotourism in various target communities, some of which are well developed.

Impressive colonial architecture in Kratie

Implementation-wise, the project relies heavily on subcontracting, which has benefits and constraints at the same time: on one occasion no less than 18 sub-contracts were in operation.  While this allows a relatively light core team, it does present issues with consultant continuity and in-depth knowledge of the trail's aims and objectives, and can create significant overlap and repetition of work.  Many consultant reports are written, each from a slightly different perspective which presents considerable reading.  Perhaps another constraint is the UNWTO contracting system that puts pressure on consultants to produce deliverables (as they should of course!), however for many provincially based businesses, a true partnership with the project has not been made, and many of the activities are voluntary, sometimes with a tepid local response.

So what has my role been in this?  For much of the latter part of 2011 I have been a subcontractor to the project, at the same time conducting some research as part of a larger research proposal based upon heritage tourism development projects.

Composting Demonstration in Preah Rumkel

I have worked with Live & Learn Environmental Education to develop and support a Waste Management project in the target communities.  This focused on developing appropriate awareness raising materials and transferring Live & Learn's considerable field training experience to local community leaders, from both rural and urban areas.  Additionally, a rural composting scheme was developed and introduced to local communities.  My work involved project resource planning, log frame, developing a long term monitoring and evaluation system and providing project management support, as well as analysis of waste management issues.

Nika trains a vendor by Kratie riverfront

My larger assignment has been managing the teaching and training of English for Tourism component.  English language skills are something that can be readily improved throughout the trail area and help improve local businesses and micro-enterprises work with international tourists.

I developed a comprehensive training programme aimed at a wide audience, including classroom based training and evening classes for guides and hotel staff, on the job training and mentoring to street vendors, transport providers, small restaurants, informal sector guides as well as in the Community Based Ecotourism communities, to homestay operators, vendors, guides and boat operators.  I employed a team of 4 very enthusiastic recent teaching graduates from the Royal University of Phnom Penh who worked in Kratie Town, Stung Treng Town, Preah Rumkel Community, O'Svay Community, Koh Phdao Island, Sambour and Koh Trong Island (click on each for pictures).  As part of the programme I developed a professional competency based training programme using vocational training methods and certificated assessment programme.  Of the 230 trainees that took part in training, 138 were awarded certificates.

ToT Workshop in Kratie

And finally, research: Professionally, I am very interested in how such projects impact local host communities, heritage assets and what benefits they provide.  I am especially interested in looking at how southern Lao, (the 4,000 islands area), has developed without much (if any) development project support and how the Mekong Discovery Trail Project has been designed and implemented, and how successful and relevant it has been.  The issues that interest me include the trail's focus on guided trail leaflets and their use by both tourists and the private sector, and how the trail meets the bulk market of independent travellers.  I am in the process of investigating the possibility of developing this research into a larger PhD proposal looking at the broad topic of improving host community and heritage conservation benefits from tourism.  But more on that later.

For pictures, please click on the following links:

English Language Training Programme
Waste Management Awareness Raising Programme
Preah Rumkel Community (by the Laos Border)
Don Det & Don Khone (4,000 islands, by the Cambodia border, opposite Preah Rumkel)
Stung Treng Town and around
Kratie Town and around
Koh Trong

Pu Luong Ecotourism Project

Rice paddy terracing is common in Pu Luong

Pu Luong Nature Reserve is a gorgeous limestone karst landscape just three hours by car from Hanoi, home to Thai and Muong ethnic minorities, as well as a well preserved, but exploited forest system, home to the critically endangered Delacor's Langur.

It's a lush landscape

As with many similar landscapes and communities, there are considerable threats from land encroachment, population growth and development that forces the local community to exert increasing pressure on the natural resources that they rely on for their livelihoods.  Forests are becoming degraded thus threatening local livelihood security as well as biodiversity.  Additionally, large scale tourism development has been mooted by the Provincial People's Committee and associated departments, development that would significantly alter the character of the landscape, damage natural resources, place increasing pressure on biodiversity, whilst at the same time further marginalizing the local population.

Community members in consultation workshop

Up to 4,000 international tourists visit the site annually, mostly on pre-booked trekking packages with adventure travel companies, who subcontract to in-bound operators, who in-turn subcontract to a local operator.  Some local homestays have been created by a previous NGO project, but problems exist with theequitable distribution of profits from the tourism product, to an extent where tourism provides only negligible financial gains to the community.  Thankfully, a forward thinking project funded by Irish Aid allows for a comprehensive and well planned ecotourism (or perhaps "cultural tourism") project to be developed in the Nature Reserve.

My role was to lead and capacity build a national team from Fauna and Flora International through the ecotourism process to develop an equitable and pro-poor ecotourism plan to guide the two year project.  This was completed in five main stages:

1. Meeting with provincial, district and commune decision makers

Water wheels for irrigation and power generation

We held formal meetings with key provincial departments in Thanh Hoa City, to introduce our project objectives and needs.  This was followed up with meetings at District and Commune level, to ensure all were clear about the project and it's purpose.

2. Conducting an extensive tourism resource survey in the nature reserve

The team travelled extensively throughout the nature reserve, meeting local communities, observing key social, cultural and natural features, and other tourism related resources and issues.

3. Holding in-depth community consultations

Rice paddy on the valley floor

The project was centred around the needs and wishes of the 3,000 people that live in the reserve, and these communities are the key draw factor for tourists.  We held workshops in each village to allow communities to make informed decisions about the type of tourism development they would like to see in their landscape.  This valuable information showed communities did not wish to see large scale investment or landscape change affect them -this would be the key information used to develop the plan, and provide a strong argument against heavy development from provincial agencies.

4. Developing an equitable ecotourism plan for Pu Luong

The plan identified 18 key action points to achieve comprehensive sustainable and equitable ecotourism in the nature reserve.  Of these, the following were identified as priorities:

Ladies carrying fuel wood

• Develop and implement tourism zoning and management (using Recreation Opportunity Spectrum methodology)
• Implement guidelines, codes of practice and regulations to ensure low-impact and equitable tourism
• Establish and support a community tourism association
• Develop local Value Chain to add-value to tourism
• Work with in-bound and local tourism operators to ensure they allow more financial benefits to reach local communities
• Implement entry fee system to fund conservation activities
• Develop small scale handicraft programme, utilizing existing skills and products
• Implement tourism awareness training to key stakeholders

5. Developing, discussing and agreeing next steps in a multi-stakeholder workshop

The team ran a final consultative workshop with key stakeholders including nature reserve managers, tour operators, provincial decision makers and local communities.  Here, wishes of the local communities were presented along with the above action points.  Discussions were held, and pledges made for support, and importantly, approval was publicly agreed to support the plan.

Village consultation workshop

A year later and the project is going strong, with key milestones having been met, with a local community tourism association set up, various trainings completed and improvements in the value chain from support of tour operators.

Key challenges as always remain the large number of provincial agencies that are responsible for management of different aspects of the nature reserve, big business pressurizing inappropriate development for the site, and local capacity to ensure project momentum is maintained.

Click here for pictures.

The EcoBoat Project, Ha Long Bay

The EcoBoat

EcoBoat is an environmental education project that aims to take local groups of students out into Ha Long Bay and put them through a basic awareness raising programme that instills a sense of pride and thus help conserve the future of the bay.  The project was funded by the UK Darwin Initiative due to the sustainable financing mechanism, which involved taking paying trips from regional international schools on multi-day trips into the bay on environmental education and outward bounds style excursions.  This was specifically targeted at schools' "activity week".

Hanoi International School

My role was to coordinate project activities, develop the international education curriculum, and capacity build project staff in outdoor education, group leadership and safety skills, as well as to lead international trips, travel to countries in the region on marketing trips and to work with the Ha Long Bay Management Department to institutionally develop the project.  I worked for the best part of two years on the project, being based in Ha Long City.

Successes were made in developing educational methodology and style within Ha Ling Bay Management Department and the local education department.  Education is very "top down" in Vietnam, where the teacher has the knowledge and gives it to the student without question (for example, during an initial workshop with local teachers, I began with asking the question "what is conservation?", to which a comment was "he doesn't even know what conservation is! he's asking us!".  Staff became proficient in facilitating student lead discussions and practical learning.

Not all work: Tug of War on Soi Sim

Partnerships were made with international schools in Hanoi and Singapore, with various projects being run in cooperation with local schools (such as the mangrove rehabilitation project).

Thousands of local students experienced a different type of environmental education in a beautiful environment, as well of hundreds of international students learning about the effects of human impacts on the environment.

As well as these successes, I was aware from the outset that the project had considerable challenges that would take considerable effort to overcome, and ultimately caused me to leave the project early to pursue my consultancy:

• The sustainable financing mechanism was based upon assumption not research - there is a high competition for "activity week" providers in the region ho offer a highly professional service.  The bottom line for international school parents is cost, for the most they pay high fees and did not see why they should pay a premium to support free trips for others.
  
• The total reliance on Ha Long Bay Management Department's boat, staff and crew was too inflexible to provide a slick product as demanded by the client group.  Issues such as alcohol consumption and safety were always a concern in a potentially dangerous environment.  Project staff and crew were often unable to attend basic safety training and drills due to other commitments.
  
• Staff retention would always be an issue at the end of the project without sustainable financing.  When initial funds ran out, and the project was transferred to local government operation and salaries, the highly trained project staff simply moved on, thus removing the key asset of the project.
  
• Perhaps overall, the project would not actually tackle the issues affecting the bay, which were, and will continue to be damage to environmental systems through rapid and ill-managed development (specifically the water composition in the bay has been altered by the removal of hundreds of square kilometres of mangrove forest, that has thus killed all of the bay's coral).  School children would have little ability to influence the bays development in the immediate future.

Mangrove lesson

At the end of the project, after a gap of six months, funding and thus activities were resumed with the support of the Australian Santos Corporation.  Sadly, the Ha Long Bay Management Department had decided to drop the EcoBoat from its portfolio citing lack of funds - international development money is hard to obtain for Vietnam's most visited and richest protected area.

Click here for EcoBoat pictures and here for Ha Long Bay pictures.

Nha Trang Bay Marine Protected Area Visitor's Centre

Visitor's Centre when completed

OK, so it's not in the right place, and we didn't control the layout of the building, but myself and my colleague Susanne spent a good part of the Hon Mun Project in developing the interpretive materials for the Hon Mun Island Visitor's Centre.  What was particularly "innovative" in Vietnamese terms was we used a stakeholder consultancy process to develop the materials (contrary to the belief of the Director of the MPA Authority who thought the entire interpretive planning process could be done in a day or two).

Cutting the boat

We worked with local fishing communities to find out about all their different types of boat, the history behind the "eyes" on a boat, the "Ca Ong" (whale) festival, and about their day to day lives.

Displays in the Centre

We commissioned large concrete coral models, interpretive panels, and even chainsawed a decommissioned fishing boat in two.  Oh yes, the Visitor's Centre... became a fabulous habitat for bats!  Click here for pictures.

Sustainable Tourism Adviser for Hon Mun/Nha Trang Bay Marine Protected Area Pilot Project

Hon Mun Island, the MPA Core Zone

I first came to Vietnam as a professional Volunteer with the UK based charity VSO.  My two year assignment was the Hon Mun Marine Protected Area Pilot Project in the sunny Vietnamese seaside town of Nha Trang.  The four year project was implemented under IUCN using the project staff sets up and capacity-builds a local management authority method.  Funders included the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank and Danida.

Colourful Corals

The waters of the MPA contained very high diversities of hard and soft coral, as well as abundant marine life.  However, fisheries were declining, and biodiversity and thus livelihoods being lost rapidly.  The project sought to tackle these issues.

My role was as the Sustainable Tourism Adviser to project and MPA Authority, with a specific task of working with the five communities living withing the nine islands that made up the marine protected area, a total of 5,000 people.  

Nha Trang City Beach

I worked with my Vietnamese counterparts within the MPA Authority, ran regular training in sustainable and ecotourism, worked with the local commercial sector, developed tourism micro-projects in the bay, developed interpretive materials and a visitor's centre and worked on tourism training programmes in the island communities.  The project introduced me to the trials and tribulations of the development and NGO sector, as well as the difficulties of working in Vietnam.  I worked with some fabulous local counterparts, built large stone models of coral, worked with a Tourism Professor from my home University in the UK, and got to witness the transformation of a provincial town into a major tourism destination.  And I did get to work with a BBC film crew on the Really Wild Show, and met Michaella Strachan (and took her dancing to the sailing club!), as well as meet some of the worlds leading figures in marine conservation.

Diving

Key tourism activities included the ubiquitous budget party boat trip, small scale beach day resorts, the occasional jet-ski and Vietnam's largest diving destination. 



With retrospect, the main problem of the project was that it failed to take into account its setting.  It was a rural marine conservation project designed for rural communities, not Vietnam's premier and fastest developing beach tourism site.

Boats being serviced before the Tet holiday

For example, a quarter of the budget was spent on sustainable aquaculture projects - villages and aquaculture cages were relocated by the provincial authorities to gain access to the "Most Beautiful Bays in the World Club".  Much emphasis was placed upon the micro-credit scheme, which saw slightly bizarre results including local residents being persuaded to purchase cows (no grazing land available), pigs (pigs died because they were kept in a barrel without light to prevent theft - no training), rabbits (dying due to alcohol poisoning and starvation - rabbits arrived before training), ostrich farming (thankfully this one didn't happen), purchase of bigger fishing nets and lobster fishing, sport net manufacture (people earning 15 cents a day), rattan basket weaving (supported by a local factory, but no mechanism to continue after project funding ended)... and so on.

Scuba diving boats

For my work, as Sustainable Tourism Adviser with a remit to work with local communities, the biggest challenge was the MPA Authority, who wanted to develop their own mainstream tourism business that had no place for local community members.  What was not mentioned in the project description was that four of the communities were living on an island that belonged to the military, and no tourism activities were permitted to take place there.  Also, the provincial development plan stated that all people living within the MPA would be relocated over the course of the following five years, with the islands to be sold off and developed as tourism resorts.

Mr Hien's grandchildren, Hon Mot

Tourism has since boomed in Nha Trang as it has become a popular destination with Vietnamese tourists.  Islanders have been relocated from most villages, and various tourism resorts have been constructed or are in the planning stage throughout the MPA.  The core zone of Hon Mun remains heavily over exploited by tourism, as no curbs have been placed upon tourism numbers, type or activity, and local fishers appear to have been allowed in to fish within the core zone.  Local dive operators have tried to create a dive association to challenge the MPA Authority, but as made little progress: competition is fierce and Nha Trang remains one of the cheapest places in the world to dive.  Click here for pictures.