ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses issues associated with a bottom-up community-based ecotourism (CBET) initiative located in a remote area of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The chapter illustrates how a small-scale tourism project is able to make a positive economic contribution to a local community as well as having positive impacts on local environmental attitudes and behaviours (see Chapters 15 and 16 for further examples of tourism development in remote areas of New Guinea). In the CBET project discussed in this chapter, the pro-environmental attitude that emerged in the local community appears to be a product of the economic value generated by tourism and the associated realisation that the environment had a value beyond that of providing food and other resources such as traditional medicines. The objective of this chapter is to examine how a successful bottom-up CBET project has benefited both the community and the environment.
