ABSTRACT
Many poor communities have turned to tourism as a means of diversifying and strengthening their development. This chapter documents initiatives, such as community capacity building, community-based impact controls, and pro-community tourism production, taken in Dabang, a Tsou indigenous community in Taiwan, to extract lessons that underpin successful community-based ecotourism development, success being indicated by the ongoing interest and involvement of local people and the establishment and survival of tourism business. This correlates to the reorganization and early exploitation stages of the resilience adaptive cycle, as well as the tourism area life cycle. Key factors in achieving success include trust, partnership and collaboration, a long-term commitment, empowerment through capacity building and “learning by doing,” and the adoption of a multi-pronged development strategy. From a resilience perspective, these elements primarily relate to the principles of maintaining connectivity and maintaining diversity and redundancy, demonstrating the overarching importance of these two elements in a rural community development context.
