By Marcela Torres

Co-management of protected areas by the State and local communities is one of the best ways to guarantee that tourism will provide economic and social benefits to many people who would otherwise be marginalized, and at the same time that it ensures protection of the environment on which these communities rely on for their income. An excellent example is the Soncor Sector of Los Flamencos National Reserve, in the Atacama Desert of the Antofagasta Region, in northern Chile.

Tourism activities under the Sápmi Experience Quality Label are based on the common heritage of the Sámi. Sámi tourism must be sustainable over the long term. This means that tourism must be accepted and established, culturally and socially, in Sámi society, and the host must be able to communicate Sámi values and way of life. Sápmi Experience operators strive for social, cultural, ecological and commercial sustainability. They are companies that respect the integrity of the Sámi culture and work to prevent its objectification.

By Cynthia Ord

Living in splendid isolation in the remote mountains around Luang Namtha in northern Laos, the country’s most traditional ethnic groups have for centuries cultivated rice and inhabited small rural villages. These tribes, however, are at a crossroads between traditional ways of life and the forces of modernity and tourism. In 1993, the surrounding region was declared the Nam Ha National Biodiversity Conservation Area, and since then, streams of tourists plan treks to enjoy the outdoors of Nam Ha and the culture of Laos’ ethnic groups.

By Hollie Tu

Last month I headed out on a tiny plane into the interior of Borneo to spend 10 days with the Penan. The Penan are one of the indigenous peoples of Sarawak and were, until recently, the only people to live a nomadic lifestyle within the rainforest. Today, most Penan have settled in villages where they primarily cultivate the land yet still utilize their hunter-gatherer skills to supplement their diet.

By Katja Bechtloff

Nutti Sámi Siida is a Sámi tourism enterprise owned by Nils-Torbjörn Nutti, a reindeer herder from Saarivuoma Sámi village, and Carina Pingi from Gabna Sámi village. During one particularly bad winter in the pastures, starvation of the reindeer forced Nils and Carina to move their reindeer to corrals. The high costs of feeding the reindeer caused the needed an additional source of income, and invited visitors to the corrals. This – combining reindeer husbandry with tourism – led to the foundation of Nutti Sámi Siida.

In 2009, Basecamp Explorer, in partnership with 500 Masai landowners, agreed to create a 20,000 hectares community wildlife conservancy in Masai Mara Kenya. The called it Naboisho, which means togetherness in local Maa language. Unique to this conservancy is that each of the 500 landowners is guaranteed of monthly income paid as rent for fifteen years, for setting aside part of their land for conservation. The rent is determined by the number of acres a landowner has contributed to the conservancy and will increase each year based on inflation rates.

As a collaborative endeavor, the Indigenous Tourism and Biodiversity Website Award is the high point of a decade-plus conservation with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Oliver Hillel and numerous friends – indigenous and non-indigenous peoples – about the best ways to develop indigenous tourism. As a non-indigenous person myself, I ask what are the best ways that other non-indigenous peoples connect with individuals and communities who take pride in their indigenous heritage.

In India as in most other places in the world, indigenous communities often exist on the fringe of society and their socio-political situation is complex. It is important for us to provide our guests with accurate and up-to-date information. Inevitably we have more information than can be easily digested on one holiday experience; our greatest challenge is to summarise centuries of history and evolution into bite size pieces! A common assumption our travellers make is that all indigenous communities share the same customs and costumes.

The Manu National Park is one of the most pristine natural areas in the world with extraordinary biodiversity. The park’s over 1,700,000 hectors, between 492 and 13,779 ft in altitude, of amazing natural environments range from Andean grasslands to cloud forests to foothill and lowland forests. The park is home to an unrivalled variety of animal and plant species, with over 1,000 species of birds and 200 species of mammals, including endangered species such as the harpy eagle, jaguar, and giant river otters.

Go Native America’s responsible travel policy is “Mitakuye Oyasin” – the final phrase in Lakota prayer which translates to: “We are all related in the Circle of Life – the two-legged, four legged, winged, and all living and growing things upon the Earth.” GNA operates in an environmentally-friendly fashion with the utmost respect for the Native American community, employing only Indigenous people as guides, and using tribally owned accommodations for tour members.