PhD-Project: Thesis submitted
My Phd-project, which gave me the opportunity to do research in places like Borneo or Rwanda, has come to an end. I submitted my thesis titled: Canopy Tourism in tropischen Wäldern - Eine akteurorientierte Untersuchung aus Sicht der politischen Ökologie in May. The defense of the thesis will take place in September. You will find the abstract of the thesis below.
Abstract: Canopy Tourism in tropischen Wäldern - Eine akteurorientierte Untersuchung aus Sicht der politischen Ökologie
Carbon dioxide sequestration and high biodiversity are two distinctive features of tropical forests which give them global value. However, these forests face the greatest threat of deforestation. Against this background, ecotourism is a frequently-discussed approach that combines the protection and use of tropical forests, and as such is a potentially promising conservation strategy. One kind of touristic use is canopy tourism which creates a new experience and understanding of tropical forests by allowing access to the forest canopy. Two such projects are being analyzed in this thesis in exemplary case studies in Malaysia and Rwanda. Such approaches typically receive attention by virtue of their connection to conservation and climate change. Their effects for the local communities, however, are frequently neglected, even though projects that aim at conserving tropical forest areas are mostly associated with constraints on - or even the loss of - livelihoods for those actors. While ecotourism approaches aim at solving manmade environmental problems, they can also lead to an imbalance in power distribution and decision-making. Political Ecology analyzes such political aspects of “human-environmental relations”. In combination with elements of Actor-Network Theory, it provides the theoretical base for the development of the analytical framework underpinning this thesis. Within this framework, actors involved in the conservation and ecotouristic use of tropical forests can be understood as elements of a network while their motivation, interaction and power distribution can be analyzed across different spatial levels. This thesis aims at advancing the scientific understanding of resource protection and support mechanisms for local communities through ecotourism.
Keywords:
Ecotourism, Rainforest, Political Ecology, Actor-Network Theory