Cross‐stakeholder role perceptions and collaborative conservation: The Ifugao Rice Terraces World Heritage Site, the Philippines

Cross‐stakeholder role perceptions and collaborative conservation: The Ifugao Rice Terraces World Heritage Site, the Philippines

This paper investigates the perceptions of a broad range of stakeholder groups concerning their own and one another’s roles in relation to the conservation of the Ifugao Rice Terraces, a World Heritage Site in the Philippines. The terraces are an iconic tourist destination of the Philippines, but face a number of tourism-related sustainability challenges. Subsequently, they were included in the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2001 up to 2011. We explore the implications of cross-stakeholder perceptions for the collaborative conservation of the site. The study affords an understanding of the complexities involved in advancing heritage conservation and sustainable tourism within the context of a ‘continuing cultural landscape’, and involving diverse multiple stakeholders ranging from local indigenous peoples to international organisations. Employing in-depth qualitative interviews with multiple stakeholder groups, this study’s findings indicate that the stakeholder groups’ role perceptions could be generally characterised by complementarities, resembling different parts of a jigsaw puzzle. Nevertheless, there exist role misconceptions, conflicts of interest, and tension between the groups, indicating some key weaknesses for the site’s collaborative conservation. These are vital concerns, which need to be appropriately addressed in order to strengthen heritage conservation and sustainable tourism in the site.