Quality and effectiveness of tourism governance in Mudumalai Forest, Tamilnadu state, India

In this thesis, I examined the quality and effectiveness of forest governance, particularly in relation to tourism, in a protected area, the Mudumalai forest in Tamilnadu state, India. This forest has been chosen as a case study because of the growing popularity of tourism in the area, as well as the challenges of developing effective relationships between forest governors and local communities. This thesis aimed to assess the quality of tourism governance in Mudumalai forest in terms of legitimacy, accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and fairness; and effectiveness in terms of supervision and monitoring. The overall quality and effectiveness of the tourism governance in Mudumalai forest is found to be good, based on evidence gained from key informant interviews, field visits and from the literature. This thesis has made recommendations for improving tourism governance in Mudumalai forest, including: ‚Äö a need to shift from a purely conferred legitimacy status to a combination of conferred and earned legitimacy; ‚Äö addressing local community fears and concerns by implementing regular and improved community engagement programs; ‚Äö using a transparent and inclusive process to develop a management plan for the forest, and effectively communicating the plan to stakeholders; ‚Äö improving the downward accountability of governance from local officials to the local community; ‚Äö treating inclusiveness and fairness as principles of good governance, rather than treating them as a means to control or change the forest dependent lifestyle of the local community; and ‚Äö modernising the supervision and monitoring techniques used in Mudumalai.