Mangrove ecotourism management at local community in Jangkaran, Kulonprogo, using hierarchy analysis

Abstract

Mangrove is one of the most pivotal of coastal ecosystems. In this study, Kulonprogo coastal area is considered in the analysis of mangrove ecotourism management. Kulonprogo coastal area is located in the tsunami prone area. Due to rapid population growth, thousands of people are currently believed to be exposed to the danger of tsunami hazard, since they live in the proximity of southern coastal. It also implies that these people are potential victims, hence the existence of mangrove ecosystems can be used as tsunami barrier and reduce the impact when disaster strikes. In order to maintain the existence of mangroves and its important ecological functions, then it is crucial to have an appropriate conservation strategy for mangrove ecosystems as well as to integrate the conservation effort with the element of education and economic. Mangrove ecotourism is one of the best strategy to conserve mangrove, provide education as well as increase prosperity of the community. For this purpose, this study proposes an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as an effective platform to investigate the management strategy of mangrove ecotourism. Hierarchical synthesis is obtained from the process of weighting by paired comparison based on expert judgments. In-depth interview survey to key person in mangrove ecotourism was used in this study. There were several main elements of mangrove ecotourism in Jangkaran, Kulonprogo Regency, i.e. the potency of mangrove ecotourism; facilities and infrastructure of mangrove ecotourism; access to mangrove ecotourism locations and institutional management of mangrove ecotourism. The results showed that the highest and lowest value of main element were institutional management of mangrove ecotourism (0.36) and access to mangrove ecotourism locations (0.14). Each main element of mangrove ecotourism is divided into several sub-elements. The three sub-elements with highest value were Management Capacity of Human Resources (0.107), Natural Zonation of Mangrove (0.96) and Biodiversity of Mangrove (0.84). Hence, these three highest value of sub-element can be used to arrange the best strategy on mangrove ecotourism management.