University of Kent

Rehema Shoo PhD Student
E-mail: ras47

CV

PhD research entitled "The economic value of eco-tourism in Lake Natron Ramsar site"

Supervisor: Professor Douglas MacMillan

Lake Natron Ramsar site (LNRS) is an alkaline soda lake which lies in the North-Eastern part of Tanzania . The lake is the only significant and regular breeding site for more than 75% of the world’s population for the near-threatened Lesser Flamingos, Phoenicopterus minor. Besides the Lesser Flamingos, LNRS also offers feeding and roosting opportunities for over 100,000 individuals of other species of water birds. In addition to providing significant livelihoods support to local communities, the area surrounding the lake holds a number of mammals such as zebra, Gazelles, Gerenuk, Giraffe, and wildebeest. Eco-tourism is being practiced in the southern part of the lake motivated by several tourist attractions which include among others the thousands of Lesser Flamingos, landscape scenery, Maasai culture and the active volcano mountain – the Oldonyolengai.

However, the lake’s status as a Ramsar is in jeopardy, due to increasing human developments which pose great potential threats to the area. These include livelihoods pressures such as extensive overgrazing and small scale vegetable irrigation farming in the catchments. Additionally, the current plan to build the Soda Ash Plant along the shore of the lake in order to mine Soda Ash from the lake is among the great potential economic pressure faced by the lake.

It has been document that economic returns from eco-tourism can be greater than the other land uses and some of the threats to natural areas could be alleviated if the potential benefits of tourism could be harnessed. It can therefore be argued that, the loss of nature can only be avoided if the economic value of eco-tourism outweighs the economic benefits of the development projects. This PhD research project aims at quantifying the total economic value of eco-tourism in LNRS by assessing the tourists’ willingness to pay and the local people’s preferences for different eco-tourism resources in the area.

The specific objectives of the study are:

• To evaluate the tourists’ preferences for eco-tourism experience in Lake Natron
  
  
• To evaluate the local people’s willingness to accept eco-tourism
  
  
• To estimate the potential loss of tourism revenues if mining is to be allowed in LNRS instead of the area being developed for conservation and tourism
  
  
• To inform the Government and the policy makers on the right land use or mixed land use option
  

Funding

Commonwealth Scholarships