Climate-resilient Community-Based Tourism: Why Stronger Communities Matter

Building community resilience has increasingly started to be an important thing flagged out by many community-based tourism (CBT) practitioners as an essential part of achieving climate-resilient tourism. Many CBT projects treat climate resilience as a technology and infrastructure problem (early warning systems, sea walls, solar, water tanks). However, the United Nations (2022) stated that climate resilience is inseparable from community livelihoods and wellbeing. Social capital, which relates to things like trust, fair benefit-sharing, local leadership succession, and rules that prevent conflict, all determine the level of acceptance, adoption, and scaling of investments in CBT climate resilience. Climate shocks amplify old tensions: unequal tourism benefits, land/sea access disputes etc. Climate change exacerbates inequality, and thus it is pertinent that CBT focuses on strengthening communities’ bonds.

How does stronger cohesion in the community help make CBT more successful?

Climate change causes resource scarcity, which often can potentially also create situations where inequality happens, as resource sharing could become unequal and that creates challenges in CBT operations. This could mean partnerships with stakeholders like businesses, NGOs and even the government can be important in resolving this issue.

CBT resilience improves when communities have a shared purpose, trust, and practical ways to cooperate (clear roles, transparent accounts, agreed rules, and grievance pathways). Musavengane and Kloppers (2020) seemed to imply that there is a need to discuss the factors that promote community resilience in CBT projects. What breaks CBT initiatives are not really the quality of the infrastructures – not really the solar panels and roofing but fragile and broken relationships. Climate-resilient CBT does not start with infrastructure upgrades—it starts with stronger communities.

Nguyen et al (2022) asserted that trust, reciprocity, norms, and cooperation are essential to the success of community-based tourism development. Social capital promotes shared purpose, trust, and better cooperation which will help manage scarce resources and stabilising incomes when bookings drop. Without strong social capital, cohesion will not exist. Musavengane and Kloppers (2020) stated that social capital appears to be essential in building community resilience in CBTs and investing in social capital seems to be the best way to build strong and resilient communities.

Social capital enables communities involved in tourism to enjoy better access to resources that increase the rate and quality of participation of local people in the community in tourism planning.

Climate resilience depends on this: when people trust the system and feel included, they cooperate during shocks, accept tough rules (closures, caps), share resources, and rebuild faster.

Weis et al (2021) asserted that access to tourism benefits, dependencies, and local perceptions shape resilience in island CBT contexts.

Climate-resilient CBT designs for volatility: resilient CBT does not depend on one or two champions but everyone. It needs stakeholders to come together to build community resilience, relook the ways community resilience is being built and the way partnerships operate. And all these cannot happen without strong cohesion amongst the communities.