Rural tourism and protected areas – factors to increase resilience of rural areas

Abstract

The study analysed the influence of presence of protected area on the vulnerability and
resilience of the surrounding region in different socio-economic and natural shocks and
perturbations. For the study two areas were selected: area of Triglav national park (TNP), as
area with highly diversified rural tourism and area of Kozjansko regional park (KRP) as area
with low level of rural tourism diversification. The primary data collection was conducted with
use of in-depth interviews among relevant stakeholders. In each area some interviews were
carried out, where some interviews were representing multiple stakeholders also. The results of the analysis mostly confirmed our hypothesis. We could recognize that the diversity of
actors and social roles are essential as sources of stabilty, resilience, robustness and
integrity in the social dimension of natural resource management, that an ecological regime
shift or collapse does not necessarily result in a regime-shift or collapse of the social[1]ecological system, that an adaptive governance framework relies critically on the
collaboration of a diverse set of stakeholders operating at different social and ecological
scales, that good governance of the socio-economic domain does not necessarily imply
maintaining a stable / resilient / robust / integer social-ecological system and that institutions,
social networks and organisation interact across scales. On the other hand a hypothesis that
more diverse tourism leads to higher stabilty, resilience, robustness and integrity of social[1]ecological systems was not confirmed.