Assessing the sustainability of tourism-related livelihoods in an urban World Heritage Site

ABSTRACT

The relationship between UNESCO World Heritage Sites and tourism has been described as a double-edged sword, with the benefits of tourism countered by its adverse impacts. To the extent that tourism-related livelihoods are dependent on World Heritage status, the loss of that status may have significant adverse effects, especially for poor people. The Sustainable Livelihood Framework has been used to analyse the development, or otherwise, of rural communities in poor regions of the world. This paper uses this approach to examine the urban poor of a World Heritage Site in Thailand, The Historic City of Ayutthaya. As a consequence of tourism and urban industrial development, not only has there been conflict between the urban poor and the Thai government within the designated heritage area, there is also conflict with the neighbouring industrial zones. This has resulted in fears that World Heritage status may be lost. Viewed within DFID’s Sustainable Livelihood Framework, lack of capital and little community participation are factors which contribute significantly to an unsustainable livelihood. However, this research concludes that using self-reliance as a measurement of people’s livelihood to determine ‘sustainability’ is inappropriate in an urban-tourism context because people living in urban areas rely heavily on external sources.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable livelihood
• World Heritage Site
• the Historic City of Ayutthaya

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Patranit Srijuntrapun is a lecturer in Environmental Social Sciences at Mahidol University, Thailand. Her research interests include environmental management and sustainable development.

Hamish Rennie is Associate Professor in Environmental Management and Planning at Lincoln University, New Zealand. His interests include resilience and development.

David Fisher is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism at Lincoln University, New Zealand. His research interests include tourism theory and heritage tourism.

Notes

1 Detailed reporting of the interviews and observations can be found in Srijuntrapun (2012).

 

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by a doctoral scholarship from the New Zealand Scholarships Programme – Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade New Zealand (MFAT).