Sustainable management of freshwater swamp forest as an ecotourism destination in Indonesia: A system dynamics modeling

Abstract

As a freshwater swamp forest that still remains in Java, the existence of Rawa Danau as an ecotourism destination is important to be explored, because its utilization is not yet based on sustainable management principles. For this reason, a system dynamics modeling was then made that integrates various factors in the biophysical, social, and economic dimensions to obtain the best alternative for managing the future ecotourism destinations. Management alternatives are designed in three scenarios: deep ecotourism oriented to very strong/strong sustainability; shallow ecotourism oriented to weak sustainability; and mass tourism oriented to very weak sustainability. The results showed that deep ecotourism was the most suitable scenario to be implemented. Through this scenario, the control of several parameters that were successfully carried out during the 10 years of the simulation are as follows: 1) restrain the growth rate of tourist numbers so as not to burden the environment; 2) reforesting almost all forest land converted so that the restoration of forest functions goes well; 3) increase local community income so that the community gets adequate economic benefits; 4) increase environmental investment so that stakeholders benefit economically, ecologically, and socially in an integrated manner; 5) maintaining biodiversity at a high level; 6) maintain swamp water reserves at a very good level; 7) reduce the volume of solid waste so that it does not burden the environment.