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Enhancing rural livelihoods through sustainable community tourism

Rural poverty, the continuous degradation of environmental health and the resultant threat to biodiversity are threatening the social and economic development of Uganda, and are prime concerns of the Government of Uganda (State of the Environment Report 2001). These problems reinforce one another and are compounded by:

1. Weak institutional linkages between rural communities, NGOs, universities, government departments and public policy makers;
2. Deficiencies in community oriented professional skills in Sustainable Tourism and Biodiversity Conservation;
3. The need to transform community attitudes to view the environment and wildlife as natural capital on which rural livelihoods can be improved; and
4. The need for interdisciplinary approaches in higher learning to address intertwined problems of biodiversity conservation and sustainable tourism development.

Enhancing rural livelihoods in Uganda through community based tourism can be a solution to reducing poverty and its related problems: encroachment in protected areas, deforestation, poaching of wildlife, and attendant environmental degradation. Makerere University and the University of Manitoba are building on their existing partnership and working together with the Government of Uganda, private enterprises, NGOs and community partners to raise human resource capacity, particularly of rural women, to take advantage of tourism opportunities in order to contribute to reducing poverty while conserving the natural environment.