Ecological indicators as a tool for ensuring ecotourism sustainability in protected areas: An expert panel-based consensus

Sustainable management of ecotourism (SME) deals with ecologically sound practices that maintain the environment ecosystems integrity, productivity, resilience and biodiversity. Ecological indicators for assessing environmental sustainability, is increasingly being implemented in many parts of the world, as a response to widespread natural resources loss and degradation. For this purpose it requires the development of appropriate criteria and indicators (C & I) that are operational, suitable for monitoring ecotourism sustainability. Several attempts have been made world over to develop C & I, which are specific to various protected area conditions and recognized as appropriate tools for assessing and monitoring progress towards ecotourism sustainability. Northern forest watersheds of Iran have high ecological, social, cultural values, but they are without definite C & I which has been developed for monitoring ecotourism sustainability. This investigation aimed to verify through the elicitation of experts‟ opinion. A Delphi process with accompanied face-to-face meeting was performed for identifying the relevant criteria and broad set of indicators. At the end of round two it reached to 9 criteria & 61 indicators. The first three criteria pertain exclusively to ecology with 21 related indicators. Thus more than one-third of indicators pertain to ecological dimension that largely govern sustainability of ecotourism in protected areas. Rest of criteria pertains to social, economic, cultural and institutional dimension with associated indicators. This provides holistic approach for monitoring ecotourism sustainability.

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word: ecological indicators , ecotourism , sustainability , protected area , Iran