OzAlum Podcast Eps #17 How Vital Is Sustainable Tourism for Indonesia's Economy?
what is sustainable tourism it's really about making sure that as a tourist you're providing a future in terms of economic impacts and social impacts and environmental impacts so easy to say but hard to implement in Indonesia it's always a conflict when we want to change from the masterism the quality tourism for example hello and welcome to the ozylum podcast where we bring you some unique stories from our inspiring alumni with me kendartante subrotto podcast is your channel to your Global Alumni network this podcast is brought to you by the Australia Global alumni team in Indonesia [Music] in this episode we will talk about sustainable tourism in Indonesia as we all know tourism is one of the most important sectors for obtaining foreign exchange which is vital to our economy with the Revival of the tourism sector after the covid-19 pandemic tourism is recognized by the government as a critical tool for socioeconomic development however along with its positive impact on economic growth the expansion of the tourism industry is also a significant contribution to Rising CO2 emission as well as energy consumption tourism industry is responsible for about eight percent of the world's carbon emission Indonesia has committed to cut that figure by half by 2035 and reach Net Zero by 2045. the minister of Tourism and creative economies San Diego Uno mentioned that the pandemic has highlighted the critical need to transform the tourism industry into sustainable tourism Indonesia is now Reinventing and prioritizing towards high quality and sustainable tourism goals through implementing community-based sustainable inclusive tourism which will translate to job creation impacts and boost the overall economy yet questions remain on how important is environmentally sustainable tourism for Indonesia how can Indonesia limit the challenging exposure within the context of environmental welfare such as nature-based tourism and heritages the rising climate change and global warming and energy consumption before we dive into the discussion let me say hi and introduce you to both our great speakers today Professor Noel Scott and Muhammad Farid Zaini hello Prof Noel hi Farid hi hello mcander kravnal really nice to meet you again great to be here thank you thank you so much for joining this podcast no Scott is a junk professor of Tourism management and the sustainable Research Center University of the Sunshine Coast Queensland Australia and Center for tourism research at the common University Western Australia and professor neural research interests include the study of Tourism experiences destination management and marketing as well as stakeholder organization he is a frequent speaker at International academic and Industry conferences he has over 300 academic Publications including 17 boots and now let me introduce you to Muhammad Paris Zaini general manager of rinjani lombok UNESCO Global geoproc Management agency Barrett has just been appointed as the new chairman of the Indonesian geopark Network who is responsible for coordinating the 19 geoparks in Indonesia the geopark development has a very significant contribution to sustainable tourism in Indonesia professional and varied we heard so much about the word sustainability and sustainable tourism but perhaps many of us are unsure about what is actually sustainable tourism and why is it important for Indonesia thank you very much for the opportunity to talk look what is sustainable tourism there are many sort of academic definitions but it's really about making sure that as a tourist and as a host Community you're leaving you're providing a future which is better than the past in terms of economic impacts and social impacts and environmental impacts you can never stop being sustainable and it's not just one outcome it's a continuing thing I like to think of it more in terms of specific projects so what are we doing in our destination to make it more sustainable and there's lots of things that you can do so to me it's more action orientated about projects making sure that we are all trying to think about the type of Tourism we have and have developed and to move and manage that tourism to be more sustainable thank you Prof Noel and what about you Harriet yeah based on my experience for the last 10 years in tourism especially in Dropbox Basics are the triple bottom line of sustainable tourism which is the three piece so we all know that the planet the people and the profit it will consist of the all the sustainable tourism concept so easy to say but hard to implement in Indonesia it's always a conflict when we want to change from the mass tourism the quality tourism for example so we all heard about the case in borobudur and commodore National Park to limit The Visitors by increasing the entrance fee shows that it's not easy to implement what we call Quality tourism the Government tried to protect the Heritage by limiting the tourists through the interest-free increment for example and the people are protest because they're afraid they will lose income and profit from this policy so to make it sustain I think we should find the equilibrium point between these three piece aspect the planet people and profit and find a way to make it balance however the government of Indonesia really concerned about the development of the silver tourism the government now already sets a clear Direction in the National development plan to implement the integrated and sustainable tourism development program or in Bahasa it's called programs to support the sustainable tourism in the top 10 super priority tourism destination including lombok here mandelier gas station to start with so we prepare the regulation the budget special team framework and all the planning details toward a sustainable tourism development in Indonesia so I think Indonesia has taken sustainability tourism very seriously and take this as a really really important things to develop that sounds quite promising right I want to check with an expert in tourism Prof Noel in your observations how sustainable is Indonesian tourism and what challenges are still being faced by the sustainable Market in Indonesia and how are they different actually from what Australia faces yes good questions I think that Indonesia is beginning to implement policies to make tourism more sustainable this is a journey it's about making and implementing and then monitoring national parks to make sure that the parks are protected it's about protecting wildlife and making sure that the orangutans in calamantan are protected and can and have enough land forested areas to survive in the long term it's about making sure that that the communities that host tourism Villages actually make enough money to make it worth their while so tourism in Indonesia is becoming more sustainable and in fact I do think that tourism can actually lead sustainability that's what we're seeing as uh back farad was talking about in Komodo it's in those places that the issues are so Stark and where the government is having having to to think about and make trade-offs and tourism is leading that and I think that's a very encouraging step how is Indonesia going I think like Australia tourism in Indonesia is starting to become aware of sustainability probably it's doing some of the things that happened in Australia maybe a decade or so ago so Australia now is not facing the same challenges as Indonesia is that what you said oh yeah the challenges are the same it's about managing waste and making sure that your beaches and your destinations are clean it's about making sure that logging in National Parks is under control and making sure that you're protecting the area all of these things have happened in Australia and it's just that they happen in the past Indonesia is a developing countries is starting to implement those policies and regulations and rules to protect its environment and to enable tourism to work well but it'll take time it's just a tone to implement everything yes time we can't have every change instantly let me move to for it perhaps you can share your thought on what are the most challenging issues that tourism stakeholders in Indonesia based in implementing sustainable tourism oh the challenging I think it's quite a lot yeah so as I mentioned before the conflicts amongst the community where we want to implement quality tourism is part of the sustainable tourism accuracy entrance fee for a better facilities and services for instance than to happen in Indonesia so not only in borobudur and commodore National Park actually here it'll about this happen as well some group of people resist couple car investment project to Modern Journey so they are afraid that it will undermine their income or tracking guide to Modern Journey so I agree on what Professor Knoll said that we need to take very seriously on the awareness education especially amongst the community on what sustainable means and we should learn a lot from Australia how they implemented sustainable tourism in their country so in Regina lombok Joe Park we have some programs that the aim of the project is to achieve the sustainable local communities through a better and joyful iteration and education activities specially on how we can celebrate the Earth Heritage by conserve the nature itself we always try to put some medication insight into every tour package that we create with the local douche operators and guide so I think that is the most challenging part of implementing the sustainable tourism building here in Lobo especially plan our speakers mentioned just now about the importance of awareness right now about the common practices and behaviors habit and also activities that tourists or operators often they do without realizing their action May harm sustainability what kind of examples are there Professor well yeah two gods and two companies they generally want to provide their customers with a good experience so they would love to be able to take them to beautiful places like Mount rinjani or coral reef or seeing the birds of paradise in Papua and if you do that for one person it's great the problem is if it becomes so popular that you're actually disturbing the animal then you've got tourism out of control and you start to get degradation of the environment so having too many people go to dive spots not educating customers to take their waste away with them if they go to a camping in a national park those are all problems that you do seek and I'd just like to say if truer companies do do the right thing then generally the customer is willing to reward them by paying a little bit more money so if you're able to say we abide by principles that protect the environment and can demonstrate that then you're likely to get more customers great this is the thought for us all to reflect and what are your observations are it Ruby I believe a selfie best tourism or what we call content creator tourists I don't think it happened in general Park only I've traveled to many tourism destination in Indonesia and I think it almost a state local destination management has to see this as the opportunity to attract more people to cup but the result is quite devastating have you ever been heard somebody had fatal accident when they took a selfie I made it happen here in zhengeance as well so last year there was a tourist from Portuguese and he died because he took a selfie on the summit of the Moon region apparently he was too close to the edge of the cliff and he fell and died and when we cannot risk our life in the name of what we called content creation and I think it's risking the tourism destination sustainability as well so I think this is the common behavior that we need to concern of how we can educate and then we have the better procedure how to doing tourism Management in in the tourist destination all right so Prof Noel and parrot what collaborative efforts have been made by stakeholders in tourism from the industry Academia Civil Society organizations and government and mitigating the environmental impact of tourism activities in Indonesia thank you so what sort of initiatives have been undertaken I've traveled around Indonesia quite a lot and I've found all sorts of very inspiring individual examples in Papua the people are protecting the environment in order to allow their customers to see the birds of paradise for example and they're working with the local community to protect the environment so there's more birds which means they can make more money from tourism in lombok in pakfaritz area there's people growing Coral so trying to repopulate coral reefs there's all sorts of really interesting things they tend to be a little bit isolated that said there are many Community groups doing regular cleanups of beaches so that you have more beautiful and more attractive beaches for tourists to go to at a national level the ministry of Tourism and creative Industries are rolling out a whole series of programs and indicators for destinations and doing training on sustainability so there's lots of good initiatives occurring I Can See For example the the impact of that where in lombok the road from the airport was a lot cleaner you could see that there'd have been a lot of efforts to make the place more beautiful so lots of individual efforts probably not as much overall integration going on especially here to local government level I think there's a little bit more need for training there thank you thank you over to you must sorry yeah so this something really interesting actually so this jio Pro concept of the pentaholics team to implement all the programs that we have plans so not only for that you already mentioned but the media has really important role as well to spread and communicate on what we have done and going to do so I would like to take one example that we've been doing in rinjani geopark on this the waste issue in the Mount of rinjani so it has been a major problem for the last 10 years it's not easy to collect the waste at the mod like rinjani I've been learning journey is the second highest volcano in Indonesia so collecting waste in the modern region is quite very very hard yeah so the one and only solution is to make sure that the tourists will not leave the waste at the mall of the journey the Mountaineers now are dominated by the content creator that like I said before who don't really care about environment quite different with 10 years ago and the Mountaineers are dominated with hikers or climbers who really love the nature and have the spirit to protect it so what we are doing right now is the government who gave the permit for hikers to bring Johnny will ban everyone who don't bring back the waste when they accept the mod gate when they are coming home the trekking organizers local communities organization what you call the gsos for society organizations some University activists and regions agency now creating the zero waste Mountain program so every plastic waste will strip down before the hikers start to climb rinjani so before the hiker started climbing they will get zero waste mountain and safety induction first at ring Jenny Joba information center so by this activity the waste potency can reduce up to 70 percent and mitigating the environmental impact of tourism activities in the month of region so this is the example that we are currently doing right now to make sure that the environmental impact of tourism activities in Indonesia doesn't affect badly for the nature itself wow that's really an amazing breakthrough you know and when we talk about the pandemic we have just been hard hit by the coffee pandemic and from your experience Prof Noel what strategies are actually best used for a country's tourism sector in anticipating future Global crisis well thank you clearly the covert crisis was unprecedented you know at the beginning the crisis I couldn't believe that tourism would shut down globally it was amazing I think it's highlighted for me a couple of issues about tourism in Indonesia especially the population is so large there's a lot of people who are Indonesians who want to travel in the country and I think that tourism Indonesia is actually built on that so if you have a vibrant Indonesian travel industry a lot of Indonesians traveling within the country you will have a vibrant International sector so I think covert has highlighted the importance of developing travel within Indonesia especially to the Beautiful the natural and cultural attractions that you have right the way through Indonesia so for me improving the quality of domestic tourism is one of the best ways to avoid International crises that stop people coming to your country so for me that's one of the main issues thank you so this is very strategic yeah that the Indonesian government has encouraged all Indonesians to just travel within Indonesia and when we talk about Australia and what people can learn from Australia Paris you finish your Australia Awards short course on sustainable tourism management recently so perhaps you can tell us here what are the biggest lessons that you have gained from Australia and how do you plan to implement your knowledge to your geopark it was a great great experience that I've been in Australia for uh I think it's two weeks in Australia and I felt so blessed that I can learn so much from my study in Australia the biggest lesson learned that I have gained during the program was that the consistency of the power level to make this sustainable to reserve strategy happen things start from the University Research and that they make this concept the developer plan along with the execution strategy maintaining and evaluating Edition all been done very very smoothly good and proven well received by the people and the environment so that's what I saw for the last two weeks in Australia compared to Indonesia of course we still must learn so much from Australia sometimes we are very good in concept and strategic development but we are quite poor in execution and maintenance in my organization proportionally I will make sure that kind of consistency power level of sustainable tourism concept can run through all the process that we've been doing so as Professor Knowles taught me during the sword course we need to see the short-term result the stepping stone to a bigger goal the small achievement that will motivate the team and Inspire others to make the similar or even better and bigger project achievements so I think that's what we are going to do right and foreign is just the right example to implement whatever you have learned in Australia right because with your Authority as the chair government of Indonesian geopark network of course you have lots of responsibilities so now we are going to ask for your responsibility here to tell us all how do you ensure the geopark development goals are actually aligned with the sustainable tourism concept perhaps you can provide a sneak peek of any exciting geopark project yeah I should always remember that we are not alone on this among us there are well dedicated stakeholder of geopuck development Indonesia sure I will be not alone they are really really concerns about the implementing sustainable tourism concept so for the last 10 years all the stakeholders from the ministry of Tourism and creative economy local government University tourism industry local communities and of course the 19th geopark management agencies in Indonesia we are in the same page to creating what we call the sustainable tourism concept or development during the Asia Pacific job Symposium that was held in lombok back in 2009 19 all the 600 participants from 30 countries signing the Declaration of rinjani that one point mentioned in that document was the UNESCO Global job management needs to be able to promote and develop geobox sites as sustainable tourism destination providing comprehensive interpretation of geotherism trails promotion accessibilities availability of Tourism amenities and also commodity-based tourism development in the UNESCO Global job so about the exciting geopark projects I think I can share one that might interesting so this year we will have the four geo-tourism festival and International Conference in July 2023 the event will take place not only in rinjani but as well in ballito so we have Bluetooth as well the theme of this event is archipelago Marion and geotourism development for livable planet so this year we expect more than 500 participant from 10 countries gathered offline in both places so the events will have panel session including Prof note as one of our guest speakers scientific class session Workshop geofair field trip and all the entertainment so through this podcast I would like to invite all of you to join this event let's go everybody let's go and now we also need your advice Prof Noel and also for it about where to go perhaps both of you can suggest some examples of the best sustainable tourism destinations in Indonesia that have many Global sustainable tourism Council standards and please tell us why did you recommend this places Prof Noel thank you sir we're not thinking about destinations I'm thinking about fairly specific places recently I've been to Zumba and to a place called the Zumba Hospitality Foundation where they're doing great work in helping people to learn skills and giving them jobs in five-star hotels I've been to a place called gamalama spices which is in tanate there the community have developed a restaurant where they're displaying where they're producing food which is wonderful and in a well beautiful environment there's a number of Eco lodges across Indonesia which are amazing I've been to ecologist Indonesia in tanjong Pudding national park where you can see orangutans of course the kanamoto dragons um village tourism in Bali so I would encourage people in Indonesia to see the Beauty and the culture of Indonesia but perhaps before going overseas so lots of places to see over to you I would say tourism Village it's the best example that met the standard awarded by unwto in 2021 as one of the best tourism has proven the implementation of community-based Tourism can truly give a great positive impact for the people inside the village last year I've lived there at local Homestay for four days with my family and we are really felt authentic of being in and become part of the countryside during my stays we learned so many things we have trekking to the this ancient Geo trails to see the geological diversity we also saw so many things about the biological diversity as well the cultural arts and we learn how to make chocolate processing we went to the atawa goat farm the echo Spa at local Source food that I think is really really interesting so I think it's one of the best holiday that I've done with my family so I think this is the one example of the best server tourism resolution Indonesia that has met the global sustainable tourism console standard that you mentioned before wow wow it's really inspiring right so so let's go there one day if we talk about supporting Indonesia to become more sustainable tourism destination and become more resilient perhaps provenol you can give us some suggestions how we all can do that to support Indonesia so that it becomes a more sustainable tourism destination well I always think start with the basics and waste management in Indonesia is an issue which needs to be addressed as it's causing plastic pollution across the beaches of Indonesia so on an individual basis make sure you don't throw away your rubbish but you dispose of it properly and then at a community level develop the waste management systems that you need to make sure it's treated properly perhaps just try and think about at a personal level think about the impact that you as a person are having and try and take some small step to reducing it in some way if we all do that then we're moving towards sustainability thank you wow that's very deep and masparate what is your suggestion for us to contribute I am fully angry with Professor Knoll waste management is one of the top priorities in our job program as well another thing that I think is important is to improve the skills and capabilities of the tourism destination management I think the mindset and how they react to the real problem in the field need to improve it to maintain and keep on the track and align with the future of sustainable tourism development I know that it's not easy but in some points we need to make sure that the people that we are working and collaborate have the same frequency to make the tourism destination more sustainable and have more resilient tourists that's all for me wow thank you so much you both are really resourceful inspiring and really open our eyes and not only that you both also recommended some places for us to visit it's teams that we have reached the end of today's discussion on sustainable tourism as both professional and variety plan earlier sustainability is really a collective Journey that requires collaboration public policy and all stakeholders involved including us members of the public must do our paths to make sustainability happen thank you so much Prof Noel and parid for joining our podcast you both are really very insightful I believe that we all learn a lot from you I'd like to also thanks all this audience for listening to our dear listeners I have a valuable piece of information for you this year 2023 marked 70 years since the first cohort of Indonesian Colombo planned recipients arrived in Australia Today Australia has more than 200 000 alumni in Indonesia including senior leaders in government and businesses for 70 years the scholarship programs have positioned Australia as an important partner in building Indonesia's human resource capacity to respond to Social and economic development priorities including in post covid-19 era and to celebrate this Milestone the Australian Embassy Jakarta is leading a year-long campaign celebrating the achievement of its existing alumni and promoting the Australian Global alumni program to a new generation of Scholars across Indonesia please check for Australia Awards in Indonesia website www.australiawards indonesia.org and our weekly alumni
update for more information about 70 anniversary celebratory activities delivered to us this year that's all for this episode on the ozalung podcast if you like our podcast leave us a comment rating and review and if you want to stay connected with our alumni networks and stay up to date with our alumni events you can subscribe to our Scholars and alumni weekly updates and join our Australia Indonesia alumni Forum on LinkedIn the links are in the show notes and see you back here again soon bye for now foreign
2023-08-06 10:27
