COMMUNITY-BASED ECOTOURISM (CBE) DEVELOPMENT IN LOWER KINABATANGAN OF SABAH, MALAYSIAN BORNEO

Abstract

Ecotourism related activities such as river boating, wild life viewing, jungle trekking, fire fly watching, trees planting and homestay programme have been introduced in Abai Village, Lower Kinabatangan, Sabah since 2005. Majority of the local communities are willing to participate in ecotourism activities because they believe ecotourism and homestay programmes can provide extra income for their livelihoods. Even though local communities at Abai are willing to participate in ecotourism activities, there are a few challenges faced by them in order to gain real benefits from ecotourism development. Within the context of Special Interest Tourism (SIT), this study was conducted in September until November 2014 to observe local participation in ecotourism activities. In-depth interviews were conducted with various participants such as homestay operators, forest restoration participants, head village and management of Community Abai Project (CAP). The findings have revealed that the local people manage ecotourism activities in Abai such as the Habitat Forest Restoration Project and Homestay Programme. Although the local community supports the ecotourism activities in Abai, they still encounter challenges such as (1) lack of capital resources, (2) out migration of youths, (3) lack of public facilities, (4) leadership, local capacity and communication issues, and (5) threats to wild life animals causes the local participation in ecotourism development to be uncertain.