Tourism Revenue as Catalyst for Sustainable Development

Tourism and the revenue it generates are frequently fronted as the main selling points for establishing and maintaining national parks in many developing countries. For example, Uganda Vision 2040, Tanzania Vision 2025 and Kenya Vision 2030 all amplify the importance of national park-based tourism in their national development plans as one of the key sectors to catalyse transformation of their economies. Emphasis is both on the national and local contexts, where tourism revenues are seen as a key source of foreign exchange and, perhaps more importantly, a source of cash income in park-adjacent localities that are usually at the periphery of the cash economy. This chapter explores evidence of tourism and the different models of sharing tourism revenues and the extent to which these can deliver sustainable development particularly of the local economies. Management and policy-relevant recommendations are made for a sustainable future of national parks that use tourism revenues to catalyse sustainable development.