The Role Of Ecotourism In Raising Environmental Awareness And Livelihood Improvement: A Case Of Arumeru District

ABSTRACT

The study aimed to assess the role of ecotourism in enhancing environmental awareness and livelihood improvement in Patandi and Duluti villages in Arumeru District. It has used several methods of data collection such as documentary review, household questionnaire survey, focus group discussion, key informative, interview and physical visit. Quantitative data were analyzed using content analysis. The sample included respondent. Finding for this study show that, ecotourism program in Patandi and Duluti villages had several mechanisms employed in enhancing environmental awareness and livelihood improvement. Those include:-The use of public meeting, public training and advertisement so as to raise peoples‟ awareness towards environmental conservation. In other hand, training of local people on professional career, priority employment to local people and transparent on income and expenditure were among the mechanisms employed to improve local people livelihood. Further assessment revealed that, the mechanisms employed in ecotourism encountered several problems, among them were:- poor participation of local people in public meeting and information barrier, indirect benefit of the program and limitation to local people in accessing alternative sources of energy. The challenges led to the failure of achieving the programme‟s objectives of raising peoples‟ awareness and livelihood improvement. As a result, the majority of people have continued to cut down trees, and poverty is still persistent. For ecotourism to achieve its objectives of enhancing environmental awareness and improvement of livelihood the study recommends that: there should be special program for vi sustainable development of environment and poverty reduction in ecotourism area for a specific period of time with time to time monitoring and evaluation so as to ensure ecotourism financial capacity building. The program should clearly clarify things like improving infrastructure, loans provision to local groups so as to support small business and cultivation, raising program in professional career for local people so as to be employed in ecotourism programme, incentives provision to best groups involved in environmental conservation.