ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study set in Beloi, a fishing village located on Ataro Island, 30 kilometres across the sea from Dli, capital of Timor-Leste. Tourism is an industry that could help promote the natural and cultural assets of Timor-Leste. It explores the tensions between tourism development, food security and marine conservation in a developing country context. In order to better understand the relationships between the social, ecological and economic issues that arise in tourism planning, used an approach and associated methodology based on storytelling, complexity theory and concept mapping. The chapter describes a reflexive methodology that uses storytelling as a way to focus on tourism planning and policies for the wellbeing of the people it will most affect. Complexity theory, systems thinking and storytelling provide well-founded theoretical and methodological foundations to systematically explore the issues related to tourism and its effects on the wellbeing of the population of developing nations.
