Are Red Sea Parks Compatible with Sustainable Tourism?

Thursday 15.2.2024 @17:30-19:00 at BPB506

Dr. Gohar, a landscape planner and expert in sustainable tourism planning, boasts nearly two decades of comprehensive experience collaborating with municipal governments, research institutes, international development agencies, private sector entities, and local community organizations. His extensive portfolio includes collaborations with renowned international development agencies such as USAID, WB, AgaKhan, UNDP, Danida, and UN-Habitat, in addition to engagements with various private sector organizations. Dr. Gohar has provided training to local government officials in Riyadh overseeing major tourism initiatives, worked on tourism planning in the Red Sea protectorates in Egypt, conducted agro-tourism planning for diverse sites in Saudi Arabia; worked on the landscape design of Cradle of Humankind Park and the Kalahari in South Africa; and sustainable tourism in Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountains) in Libya. His scholarship focuses on understanding tourism development and its direct & relative impact on the environment. His latest book, "Tourism Governance: A Critical Discourse on A Global Industry," delves into tourism planning and governance across 17 nation-states.

The Egyptian Red Sea parks are a unique resource whose potential has not yet been realized. Throughout the past five decades, development for mass tourism has destroyed large areas around these parks constituting direct threat on their fragility. Innovative initiatives have taken place to protect the parks and minimize tourism impacts on them. Despite these attempts, the development pattern has not changed much, and the knowledge gained remains within a limited number of people. The main obstacles to improved planning and development are: (i) institutional, where organisations responsible are less coordinated; (ii) Technical, where practitioners tend to borrow designs that worked well in other parks in other countries, and also planning and designing with less understanding of the ecosystem fragility. 

Solutions are sought to be: (a) developing Land Use Planning with more coordination across ministries or elevate it above the ministry to be the responsibility of the entire cabinet; (b) revise architecture and planning education to encompass relevant planning tools and building technologies, and to move beyond a focus solely on Nile Valley architecture and incorporate knowledge from local tribes regarding site selection criteria and building styles; and (c) develop land use suitability maps that serve as a guide for region-specific development without compromising flora, fauna, floods, and other aspects of the environment.