Institutional arrangements for managing tourism in the Indian Himalayan protected areas

Tourism has the potential to advance biodiversity conservation through the creation of societal constituency by providing alternative livelihood to resource-dependent communities. Institutional arrangements play a crucial role in ensuring equitable benefit sharing of tourism gains among different stakeholders. We examined this role of institutional arrangements in four National Parks of the Indian Western Himalaya at varying altitude through multiple case study analysis using qualitative methods. Our results suggest that a three-tier setup involving local communities and civil society organizations, supported by enabling government policies is most efficacious in mainstreaming socio-economic development of local communities and environmental concerns in tourism management framework. Strong local institutions with intrinsic spatial linkage are required to ensure maximum benefits to all sections of society and least monetary leakages. We recommend that in natural landscapes with conflicting interests among stakeholders, a hierarchical three-tier institutional arrangement should be encouraged to achieve the goals of sustainable tourism.