Improving ecotourism in Indonesia to enhance strategic economic resources

The present of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) provides many advantages for Indonesia particularly throughout the tourism aspect. Economically speaking, the AEC gives open room for Indonesian societies to promote their own culture and natural resources. With the growing market, Indonesia can take advantages throughout ecotourism.

Riding sumatera elephant to explore the jungle is part of the ecotourism activities in Indonesia
(image is credited from http://blog.aseankorea.org)

The beginning of twentieth century gives the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries to be important role in world economic agenda. This is based on the demographical bonus occurring in those countries. In 2010, the population of ASEAN countries accounted for nine percent of the total world’s population and it is predicted to grow in the next few decades (Association of Southeast Asian Nations, 2010). Currently, the ASEAN countries have become top destination for world’s electronic corporation in selling their products.

On the other hand, the numbers of visitors who arrive in ASEAN countries is also high. From the data provided by the ASEAN’s website accounted that there were significant numbers of tourist visiting ASEAN countries from 2010 to 2014. Respectively the number was 73,752,000 to 105,083,000 people (Association of Southeast Nations, 2017). For Indonesia itself, the tourist’s arrival numbers were seven million to nine millions of people.

The opportunity of taking profitable aspect from tourism is clearly can be achieved. Tourists are more likely to visit unique places such as historical sites or protected areas. Indonesia has promising places that are related to these unique places including the protected forests and seas.

Ecotourism in Indonesia

Indonesia is located between two big oceans and continents. With this location also, Indonesia stands above two earth crusts which are Eurasia and Australia and they cause the arrangement of active volcanoes started from the western part of Sumatera Island along on the southern part of Java and going above to Sulawesi island. The Australia crust provide spectacular factors of nature in the eastern part of Indonesia.

Basically, Indonesia is full with natural tourism site with biodiversity either in land or sea. However, the organizing and management of natural tourism sites must be maintained properly otherwise it will be destroyed which can cause natural disaster. Therefore, one of the best method in maintaining this issue is by providing ecotourism. Collectively, we could prevent our environment getting damaged from the act of tourism.

Ecotourism is similar to protected areas which is one of important tool in conversing the biodiversity (Chape, Harrison, Spalding, & Lysenko, 2005). One of the great example about ecotourism is provided by the Misool Foundation. This foundation is established by Shawn Heinrichs after observing the overfishing of sharks and manta rays in Asia. The Misool Foundation has been improving the quality of wildlife and society particularly in environment and education throughout ecotourism they provide.

Ecotourism relates to the activity of tourism that involves the process of educating, conserving, protecting the area. Ecotourism activity possesses low-impact of behavior done by the visitors which can lead into sustainable benefits either for the nature itself or the local communities. Indonesia has many ethnicities and natural resources. For example, as we mentioned before the Misool Fondation cooperates with local community to stop hunting manta and whale shark. The foundation suggests the local community to provide services such as swimming with manta ray, doing scuba diving and many more.

Unlike Misool foundation, Bukit Lawang which is located near to national park of Gunung Leuser provides tourists a jungle exploration throughout riding Sumatranese elephants. While, the Rinjani National Park in West Nusa Tenggara serves the tourists with camping and trekking trail which is provided by the local community (Sadikin, Arifin, Pramudya, & Mulatsih, 2017). Economically speaking, these ecotourism sites produce workforces.

Improvement in Tourism Sector in Indonesia

One of the biggest problem in improving the ecotourism in Indonesia is about the accessibility either in form soft or hard aspects. For example, to get to eastern part of Indonesia which is rich of underwater world, the trip takes lot of time around 3-5 days. On the other hand, the facilities and infrastructures of the road is not yet constructed optimally. However, today’s government has been addressing this issue by developing the area itself.

Meanwhile, the quality of human resources is still not optimal. Providing high quality of services is still low in several areas because the local community is not well educated. Therefore, the government must provide related soft skills so local communities can be the professional host for tourists.

References
[1] Association of Southeast Asian Nations. (2010). ASEAN economic community chartbook 2010. Jakarta: The Asean Secretariat.
[2] Association of Southeast Nations. (2017, July 26). Tourism Statistics. Retrieved from asean.org: http://asean.org/?static_post=tourism-statistics
[3] Chape, S., Harrison, J., Spalding, M., & Lysenko, I. (2005). Measuring the extent and effectiveness of protected areas as an indicator for meeting global biodiversity targets. Philosophical transactions of the royal society B, 443-455.
[4] Sadikin, P. N., Arifin, H. S., Pramudya, B., & Mulatsih, S. (2017). Carrying capacity to preserve biodiversity on ecotourism in Mount Rinjani National Park, Indonesia. Biodiversitas, 978-989.