Geotourism Challenge Finalist: Mongolia’s Ger to Ger Foundation – Nomad Centered, Community-Based, Cultural Eco Tourism Development
Monday, 01 Sep, 2009
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Ger to Ger systematically enables rural communities to responsibly and sustainably tap the tourism industry to generate sustainable livelihoods through vocational training (Foundation) and market linkage development (Agency); to which within 3 to 5 years community based tourism will become well rooted. Rural communities, particularly herder groups in league with rural single service suppliers (rural drivers, guides, other human resources and businesses), provide travel services and products to the travel industry. Ger to Ger productively utilizes herders and their existing assets to develop cultural eco travel products that results in increased incomes for rural families and their communities.
The project is inclusive of the poor and the extreme poor by mobilizing herders into productive economic activity. Rather, they contribute their time and labor by establishing and maintaining the route, and later participate in the trainers of trainers programme to prepare other groups to develop additional routes. These rural communities are active in self-monitoring to assess local opportunities so as to work with the project and partners to develop micro and small enterprises. Public and private sector partnerships are fostered for business enabling environments that encourage further rural economic diversification, new labor market creation and promotion of community services in line with greater industry demands to ensure sustainability.
Example: even a homeless man with an upright and honest character, with proper knowledge and some applied experience, can walk and guide visitors from point “A” to point “B” safely.
It’s the responsibility of the Organization as it matures, in cooperation with the local inhabitants, to find new and creative ways to tap the “global” market and use this massive social economic power responsibly to systematically materialize the vision of their community’s development.
Half of Mongolia’s population are herders of which 65% are living at or below the poverty line. In comparison, the national poverty rate is at 36%. Rural poverty has been exacerbated by severe 1999-2001 dzuds, extreme winters, that caused the death of nearly 10 million livestock reducing the total number of the nation’s livestock resources from 33.6 million to 23.9 million by the end of 2002. In addition, inadequate pasture management has resulted in advance desertification and water shortages that will require many years for the environment to recover. Alternative and complementing sources of incomes that cultivate herder’s assets into non-agricultural and non-livestock income to lessen economic and natural shocks and smooth the effects of seasonality need to be developed.
At present, there still exists substantial public private partnership gaps between government, tourism projects, NGOs (i.e. policy, information development) and rural communities – that possess untapped tourism assets (i.e. mode of travel, experiencing culture). Despite the ongoing works of Ger to Ger, many rural communities and herders lack the ability and understanding on how to organize, develop and market competitive tourism services and products. Private tour companies are interested in rural community development insofar as the inexpensive outsourcing of basic food services, horse riding and a handful of other activities; these activities reaches less than 1% of Mongolia’s nomads. To alleviate rural poverty and prevent others from slipping into poverty, it is critical that there is a mobilization of the industry to develop an interlacing rural tourism infrastructure that responsibly fulfills private sector needs, while addressing the needs of sustainable community growth. Furthermore by cultivating Mongolia’s natural and herder resources, rural communities are engaging in income generating activities that is generating towards enhance public-private partnerships towards economic development, health and education development, and natural resource management in rural areas where Ger to Ger operates.
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