Can nature tourism help finance protected areas in the Congo Basin?
Wilkie, DS; Carpenter, JF Oryx [Oryx]. Vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 332-338. Oct 1999. In the debt-ridden, high-population-growth, resource-mining states of the Congo Basin, conservation of biodiversity is seldom the primary concern of national policy makers or of local resource users. Moreover, the recurring costs of managing protected areas and the opportunity costs of forgoing logging and farming to maintain protected areas are a substantial net drain on national and local economies. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly important that protected areas generate, from user fees or donor contributions, sufficient funds to offset the costs of maintaining them. Government and donor investment currently meet less than 30 per cent of the estimated recurring costs required to manage the protected-area network within central African countries effectively, and cover none of the growing opportunity costs. Nature tourism, the fastest growing sector of the $US3 trillion (3 million million) a year glo
