Tourism and Sustainable Development in Northern Thailand

Abstract

Tourist trekking is expanding among the hill tribes of northern Thailand. These tribes are chronically poor, contribute to deforestation and soil erosion, and have been a focal point of past insurgency. Development schemes have been initiated, but none has been totally successful in solving these problems. Trekking annually now attracts more than 100,000 persons to the region and accounts for the influx of approximately U.S.$2,000,000. This benefit must be weighed against the cultural and social effects on the native groups. Tourism, properly managed, could both facilitate changes advantageous to the hill tribes and minimize environmental degradation. CLOSE linkage of environment and economy distinguishes a report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1987). The report is especially forthright about the links between poverty and environmental degradation and thus emphasizes the concept of sustainable development. Further economic development is required to ease poverty in less-developed countries, but such development must not impair the environment for future generations. Tourism might be suggested as one form of environmentally sustainable development. Although tourism clearly has environmental impacts (Mathieson and Wall 1982), these are often relatively minor compared with changes wrought by other forms of development. On the other hand, tourism can lead to pervasive, insidious societal changes. This article presents a case study of the interaction between tourism and the hill tribes of northern Thailand, where trekking by affluent foreigners has become increasingly popular in the past several decades. It has been suggested, albeit with relatively little supporting data, that trekking encourages prostitution and opium production, provides little economic benefit to host villages, and endangers traditional hill-tribe lifestyles (Durst 1987; Crooker 1988; Judd 1988). Key goals of the analysis are to estimate the economic benefits of trekking and to assess its social and cultural effects. The study is based on several sources. At least two field visits, some as long as three months each, were made annually to the area between 1985 and 1991. These visits allowed substantial opportunities for mapping routes, for staying in hill-tribe villages, for observing participants on more than a dozen treks, and for interviewing guides, trekking-company owners, gov* I acknowledge financial assistance from the University of Victoria and the Canadian International Development Agency as well as support from the Social Research Institute, Chiang Mai University. Erik Cohen and David Harper provided valuable comments on the manuscript, as did Sylvia Harron who also helped administer the questionnaire used to obtain data reported in this article. * DR. DEARDEN is an associate professor of geography at the University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8W 3P5. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.73 on Thu, 11 Aug 2016 06:00:52 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms TOURISM AND DEVELOPMENT FIG. 1-Northern Thailand. ernmental officials, and villagers. Additionally, during summer 1989 and winter 1990, an interview survey of trekkers was undertaken by the same interviewer, using identical questions, to ascertain socio-demographic profiles and information on motivations, satisfactions, expenditures, perceived impacts, and similar factors. Interviews of 208 persons were made either in Chiang Mai at guesthouses or at Ban Sop Kai, a small village where many trekking routes are completed. Of the total, 173 respondents had actually been trekking; the remainder completed a different interview form on why they had not been trekking. A content analysis of the guides' recommendation books for several trekking companies was undertaken. Together, these sources allow a comprehensive, if imperfect, overview of some effects of trekking on the hill tribes.