Biodiversity tourism: a concept for oil palm villages sustainable revitalization

Rural resilience has become an interestingly debated topic in recent years, with scholars offering opposing viewpoints. Studies have suggested that rural resilience is arguably better than that of urban. Especially in the context where the rural is supported economically by the existence of some businesses such as oil palm plantations. However, certain negative images are still linked to oil palm plantations, in particular with respect to biodiversity loss, despite many of the plantations having areas of high conservation value (HCV). HCVs are known to possess and attract wild species such as elephants, orangutans, and other primates, meaning that ecologically, HCV represents a significant added value of the oil palm plantations. This conceptual paper aims to contribute to this debate by envisioning feasible futures of biodiversity tourism for oil palm village revitalization by utilizing the biodiversity richness of HCVs. This study includes a conceptual model of biodiversity tourism for oil palm village revitalization that was developed using a causal loop diagram approach. The causal loop diagram depicts an overall understanding and describes the village system’s complexity. Positive and negative loops that form the reinforcement and balance circles represent the connection between the input and output variables. A systematic literature review and interviews with pilot village stakeholders were used to collect data. The potential of such a vision is discussed before finally concluding with an insight into the future of biodiversity tourism for oil palm village revitalization. This paper recognizes that biodiversity tourism for oil palm village revitalization can be done sustainably by presenting it as a complex system with its subsystems. It shows that oil palm villages and biodiversity are interdependent and interconnected. Moreover, biodiversity tourism can be recognized as a vehicle to promote the positive impacts of oil palm plantations in enhancing knowledge and awareness of biodiversity conservation beyond existing economic value.


Introduction
Rural communities all over the world bear witness to a thousand years of human collaboration with nature and culture.Rural communities have their own communities with unique landscapes, cultures, traditions, culture, and cuisine.However, as the national economy improves in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, so do concerns about rural issues.Despite the fact that the crisis has had a significant impact on urban areas, it threatens rural areas as well.They face ongoing demographic and socioeconomic issues, such as depopulation, aging, disengagement, reduced service provision, and 1243 (2023) 012021 IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1243/1/012021 2 limited accessibility [1].Another concern is the rapid change of land use in rural areas because of rapid development [2].Planned investments generally have an environmental impact that sometimes results in the loss of valuable green areas that are part of cultural heritage [3].Traditional agriculture and rural culture are decreasing or being assimilated as a result of urbanization and modernization [2].
As it turns out, not every rural experiencing a decline.Li et al. [4] mentioned that as a result of the interactions the rural areas have with the external environment, some rural communities managed to survive.This process of improving rural resilience and developing self-sustaining rural communities involves rural livelihood diversification and the development of strong social capital.
This study focuses on the villages nearby oil palm plantations to conduct the research.In Indonesia's context, oil palm plantations initially were developed in the rural areas that were generally desolate, isolated, and underdeveloped.However, due to the presence of oil palm plantations, it is reported that at least 50 underdeveloped/isolated rural areas have been developed into new growth areas with a palm oil production base [5].But from the livelihood perspective, when the people of the villages rely mainly on palm oil economic activities, it is considered to have high economic risks.Thus, this calls for village revitalization using other resources presence in the areas.
The growth of oil palm plantations in Indonesia has been inevitably rapid due to huge market of such commodities.Indonesia, together with Malaysia are known to have shares of 91% of crude palm oil production worldwide [6].However, some negative images are still being connected to the presence of the oil palm plantations to the surrounding environment.Massive land-use change, deforestation, crop and biodiversity loss have known to be attached to the oil palm plantation image [7].On the other hand, several studies found that oil palm plantations are liked and lived in by many wild life diversities (mammals, birds, butterflies, and herpetofauna) [6], [8].Added to these, some plantations own areas that are called high conservation value (HCV) areas.These are the parts of the area that cannot be opened for oil palm planting due to the important values existing here including natural resources, artificial resources, and the nation's historical and cultural value [6].
Tourism plays a unique sociocultural role in the protection and promotion of natural and cultural resources, and it is already known to have a multiplier effect on other industries, making it a significant job creator and contributor to rural development [9].Many countries around the world have released revitalization plans to rebuild the rural community, and many of those plans include tourism.Through tourism, the stakeholders can work together to develop rural tourism [10].For oil palm villages, where the biodiversity richness is abundance, the resources can be utilized to establish the biodiversity tourism for rural revitalization.
Against this background, the goal of this paper is to conceptualize biodiversity tourism as a comprehensive strategy for village revitalization.This paper is a response to the call to theorize village revitalization through biodiversity tourism and demonstrates how biodiversity tourism can be a community-centered form of village revitalization.This paper is also aims to enrich the literature in tourism studies that mostly discuss tourism revitalization but still lacking discussion in rural revitalization [11], [12].A conceptual framework based on the integration of sustainable village revitalization concepts, biodiversity tourism, and oil palm village perspectives is proposed using a causal loop diagram approach.The conceptual model demonstrates how biodiversity tourism can be used as a tool for village revitalization, all the while contributing to the growing body of literature on the subject.

Biodiversity and tourism
According to UNWTO [13], a sustainable tourism development should optimize the use of environmental resources that are important to tourism development while also conserving local heritage and biodiversity, be respectful to living cultural heritage and traditional values of the host communities and contribute to cross-cultural tolerance and understanding, and provide equitable distribution of economic benefits.Biodiversity is defined as biological elements in nature that include vegetation natural resources (plants) and animal natural resources (animals), which form an ecosystem with the surrounding non-living elements [14].Biodiversity is important to human development because of its provisioning role for the goods and service.The tangible benefit of biodiversity is the ability to meet the needs for food, clothing, and shelter.But at the other hand, few people understand the value of inheritance, which is associated to the need to safeguard biodiversity for future generations [15].
However, a number of factors, including unsustainable use and harvesting of natural resources, climate change, pollution, invasive species, and land loss, cause biodiversity loss to outpace natural extinction.Tourism has a unique role in preserving and promoting natural and cultural heritage [9] and is supposed to make places better to live in and visit (Goodwin, 2016).The natural environment is what attracts tourists to come and visit.Although for many, the reason is not always related to admiring the environment or the biodiversity but for picnic-purpose [16].The motivation somewhat shifted when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and physical distancing was announced.It made tourists readjust their travels.With the new notion in mind about the importance of staying healthy physically and mentally, tourists favored semi-natural surroundings for recreation.This situation turns to be favorable for the nature, as Weyland et al. [17] found that this kind of travel sustains higher bird diversity.
Tourism, as one of the primary suspects in biodiversity loss, must be held accountable for maintaining biodiversity.At its core, responsibility encompasses not only revised policies and renewed declarations, but also the process and action by which commitments are made with trust, respect, and a willingness to collaborate [18], [19].Tourism must contribute to biodiversity conservation by generating funds dedicated to biodiversity protection and conservation.One success story can be used as an example is the "transboundary gorillas" agreement signed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda in the 1990s.This initiative is a great example of environmental peace-building, and at the same time shows a good intention to collaborate and how the fund produced from this tourism activity is returned for conservation.Whenever a group of gorillas cross the border into the neighboring country and the new host country takes tourists to see them, 50% of the tourism income goes back to the gorillas' origin country.This agreement has shown a positive impact where in 2015, the Rwandan national park authority earned more than US$15 million from gorilla tracking permits (www.unep.org).Thanks to this agreement too, mountain gorillas are the only great ape subspecies that are increasing in population numbers.

Oil palm village, plantations, and HCV areas
Oil palm plantations were initially established in degraded land areas in Indonesia, i.e. isolated, backward, poor, and remote that are socially, economically, and ecologically degraded.Along with the expansion of oil palm plantations, the area is undergoing economic, social, and environmental restoration that benefits farmers, oil palm plantation workers, and the village community as a whole.As the policy regarding the sustainable management of the oil palm plantations developed, among others is the requirement to provide high conservation value (HCV) areas in the plantations, oil palm plantations somehow still bear the negative image of the primary cause of massive land-use change and biodiversity loss.Oil palm cultivation is an important economic factor in tropical countries, but it has already been shown to endanger biodiversity and degrade the environment, with global consequences associated with forest loss [20].
While past studies mentioned that the existence of oil palm plantations provide economy benefits for the rural areas nearby, more empirical studies are still needed to provide proofs that oil palm plantations also help to maintain the areas' biodiversity richness [5].Oil palm plantations, as it turns out, have been thriving and attracting a wide range of wildlife.Azhar et al. [8] discussed the biodiversity-friendly practices provided by oil palm plantations, such as retaining forest patches and riparian corridors and implementing tree-based enrichment to increase bird richness.
Oil palm village is a village that produces oil palm as the main commodity of the village, either produced by oil palm plantations owned by village communities (smallholders) and companies in the village concerned [5].On the oil palm villages context, depending solely on the plantations might not a really good thing.The local communities need to also look for alternatives for the villages' resilience.With the resources of biodiversity tourism are presence, the local communities can utilize this as another means for their villages' revitalization.However, oil palm village is a complex system itself.As a dynamic and complex system, the village involves many stakeholders.Each stakeholder has own perception and understanding with different goals.These different expectations could lead to conflicts in building the villages [21].The complex systems are influenced dynamically by the environment, and reciprocally affects the environment.This shows that the oil palm village systems are dynamic and always changing from time to time.The dynamics are sometimes can be predicted, but at other times are unpredictable [22].

Methodology
According to some estimates, current extinction rates are 100 to 1000 times higher than in the past and these rates may be even higher in "biodiversity hotspots" which are home to many of our most endangered species.As a result of this crisis, many scientists consider biodiversity conservation to be one of the most critical matters confronting the conservation community today.To fight deforestation and biodiversity loss in palm oil producing countries, stakeholders must take a radical approach.This strategy requires producer countries to embrace both in-situ biodiversity conservation and biodiversity conservation in human-modified landscapes [8].
This study is as a preliminary study of a larger research project.For the purpose of this study, a pilot study was conducted involving three villages located in the rural areas in Sukabumi, West Java Province.These areas were chosen because of their locations that are near to oil palm plantations, thus could be benefitted from tourism activities from the plantations.The distance of the areas from Jakarta, which is around 115 km is one of the reasons the areas are suitable as tourist destinations.With around 2.5 hours' drive, the areas have the benefit of accessibility.
A qualitative approach was employed, and data was collected through in-depth interviews with the stakeholders.The informants were drawn that represent the group of responsible tourism management stakeholders [23].They are as follows: The interviews were conducted from June to September 2022 physically and virtually (via telephone calls and text messages).The interviews could not be conducted to a large number of people at the same time due to the post-pandemic condition in which several light restrictions were still in effect.As a result, it took several visits to interview the respondents.
Following data collection, open, axial, and selective coding procedures were used in conjunction with thematic analysis to identify codes and themes related to biodiversity tourism.The transcribed narratives were first coded to understand conditions, environments, intervening conditions, and outcomes.The data were then classified based on the coding process.Considering our comments, notes, and previous literature, the results assisted in reaching generalized conclusions on the issues addressed in this study.The whole coding and analysis process was carried out manually in repetitions to guarantee that the big picture was apprehended without straying of the details [24].
The data and information were collected to build the causal loop diagrams, from literature studies, and from the results of the focused group discussion (FGD), and in-depth interviews from the village stakeholders.To develop the causal loop diagrams, this study conducted the following phases [25]: 1) Determine the limits of the model The conceptual model developed from this study has to be given some limitations.The limits are taken from the scope this study has, based on the objectives of the study, and the variables identified earlier.The objectives of each subsystem are: to increase the income of the local people, to increase the welfare of the local people, to increase the environment quality of the tourism village, and the last is to increase the biodiversity of the village.

2) Identify the causal loops
The next step was to add the relationships between variables.These relationships show which variables are the influencer, and which are the influenced.This step also shows which variables increase or decrease other variables.

3) Develop the causal loops
This research presents four subsystems of the complexity of biodiversity tourism for oil palm village systems and developed a conceptual model for sustainable village revitalization.The causal loop diagrams explain the nexus and interconnectivity of each variable, as well as their positive and negative influence, which eventually forms the reinforcing or balancing circles.This study describes the village systems complexity and demonstrates how biodiversity adds value to the economy, socio-culture, and environmental aspects by developing these causal loop diagrams.The use of system dynamics in this study enables us to develop an approach to the village's sustainable development that has received less attention in previous research.The systems approach provides a broader perspective and thinking dimensions, as well as an awareness of interconnectedness and behavior.
After identifying the relationships of the loops, the last step of this study was to create the causal loops.In this phase, all variables were connected using arrows, and at each end of the arrows were given the positive or negative signs.

Results and discussion
Rural revitalization indicators are selected based on their usefulness in measuring progress toward rural development policy goals.Within the social, economic, and environmental dimensions, many indicators have been constructed by national and international agencies, so there are plenty from which to choose.Here, a key set is chosen from among the indicators designated to measure progress toward the SDGs.Thus, countries can leverage work already underway and reference the SDG protocols for guidance on data collection and indicator construction.The key indicators selected here address SDG goals for poverty, hunger, health, education, water quality and quantity, economic growth, and environment quality.

The economy subsystem
The economy subsystem's goal is to increase the local people's income.Tourism has already been shown to have a multiplier effect on other industries, making it an important job creator and contributor to rural development [9].In the context of nature-based tourism, it is mentioned that by incorporating natural heritage, landscapes, and wildlife habitats, it leads to economic growth [26].The result of this study on the economy subsystem shows that the variables are employment, tourism products and services, tourist attractions, tourist numbers, and trainings.
There is a feedback loop between tourism products and services and the number of tourists.Increased tourist numbers resulted in increased sales of tourism products and services, and vice versa.Both variables have a positive impact on income growth.The second loop is a balancing loop for tourist attractions, tourism products and services, and tourist numbers.The increased number of tourist attractions increases tourism product and service sales, which increases the number of tourists visiting the village.The more tourists who visit, the more tourist attractions expand.This positively influence the income of the people too.This result is supported the study that found the commercial value of the resources as inputs to the tourism production process increases when recreational activities are organized and charged for [27].

The socio-culture subsystem
Past studies mentioned that the rapid increase in nature-based tourism (e.g.coastal tourism) influenced the social and cultural sustainability [28].This study tried to prevent that from happening, thus, examining the expected outcome of the socio-cultural subsystem.It is shown that an increase in the welfare of the local people.Participation, conflicts, gender equality, and health are variables in this subsystem.In this subsystem, four causal loops are formed.The first loop is a positive feedback loop between welfare and conflict.The increase in welfare decreased conflicts, and the decrease in conflict increased welfare.
The second loop is another one that reinforces the relationship between health and welfare.People's health improved as their standard of living improved.Conflict, welfare, and health all contributed to the third causal loop.Conflict reduction increases welfare, increased welfare increases health, and a healthy community reduces social conflicts in the community.A fourth causal loop is also a balancing one between conflict (reduced), welfare (increased), health (increase), participation (increase), and back to conflicts (reduced) again.Understanding the socio-culture impacts of biodiversity tourism activities is significant to get the positive perception and support from the local community to develop ecotourism in the villages [29].

The environment subsystem
Tourism has a distinct sociocultural role to play in the preservation and promotion of natural and cultural resources [9].Environmental, along with social, sociological-cultural, and economic factors all play a role in nature-based tourism (e.g.farm tourism) [30].The goal of tourism activities in this study is to improve the quality of the environment.The variables are air and water quality, as well as waste.
The first and second loops are mutually reinforcing, between environmental quality and water quality, and between environmental quality and air quality.The third is a reinforcing loop of environment, air, water quality, and waste.Waste degrades water quality, which in turn degrades environmental quality.The fourth loop is also a reinforcing loop, as waste reduces air quality, which in turn reduces environmental quality.This result shows that waste management is important for environment.This is also mentioned by a study that says other factors, such as waste management, can influence the development of sustainable tourism in addition to the basic tourist attraction [31].

The biodiversity subsystem
Biodiversity is a new subsystem that this study proposes as one of the findings.Instead of including biodiversity in the environment subsystem, this study opts to suggest it as a stand-alone subsystem.According to UNWTO [13], not only maximizing the use of environmental resources, sustainable 1243 (2023) 012021 IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1243/1/0120217 tourism development should also preserving local heritage and biodiversity.As oil palm villages, these villages are rich in biodiversity, which can draw visitors.This subsystem's goal is to increase the biodiversity richness of the areas.The variables are species number, balance, and conservation.This subsystem provides six mutually reinforcing causal loops.The first loop connects biodiversity to conservation.The second loop is one that exists between biodiversity and species balance.The third is the relationship between biodiversity and the number of species.The fourth loop was formed by the variables of conservation and number of species.The fifth loop was formed by combining conservation and species balance.The sixth loop was formed by species balance and species number.Conservation and balance generate the seventh loop.
According to the conceptual model presented in this study, biodiversity can increase local people's income and welfare while also enforcing environmental quality.It demonstrates that including biodiversity as one of the three pillars of sustainable tourism development has a positive impact.This model also identified some potential threats to the village's sustainability, such as social conflicts and waste.These threats must be addressed and managed carefully in order to be mitigated.We can conclude from this study that taking the time to manage the village's biodiversity resources leads to the village's long-term development.
The causal loop diagram explains the dynamism and complexity.It demonstrates that the interconnectedness of variables has cause-effect relationships that concern various aspects of sustainability.From the above diagram, Figure 2 illustrates the conceptual framework composed of economy, socio-economic, environment, and biodiversity, shaped by various circumstances in the development of biodiversity tourism causal loop diagram.

Figure 2. Conceptual framework for biodiversity tourism for rural revitalization
The importance of the stakeholders' roles lies in the potential to co-create value whilst encouraging sustainable management.These propositions are implied to create a more inclusive and sustainable village revitalization.However, the complexity of the tourism system is fueled by multiple actors/sectors and their dynamic interactions.The proposed conceptual framework prompts oil palm village revitalization to the idea that both biodiversity and tourism are context bound.

Conclusions
The creation of a conceptual model of biodiversity tourism for the revitalization of oil palm villages has contributed to a better understanding of the importance of including biodiversity aspects in order to achieve sustainability.Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) argued that "biodiversity is at the heart of what drives the tourism industry" [32].The conceptual model depicts the "bigger picture" of how biodiversity tourism helps the achieve greater sustainability.The variables of each subsystem are shown to be dynamically interconnected rather than isolated or independent.Because this is preliminary research, more research is needed to evaluate this model and test each variable to determine which variables are the most influenced.Nonetheless, the model can serve as a platform to start a dialogue, collaborations, and decision makings by the village managers to start rebuilding the villages in a more sustainable manner.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of the human-nature relationship has been highlighted, and served as a reminder of the serious consequences for human well-being and survival that can result from continued biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation [32].The finding of Jurkus et al [33] supports the importance of biodiversity's role in tourism by stating that conservation of biodiversity in conjunction with tourism sustainability prioritizes forest habitats and ecosystems.
This study is part of a larger research project that is still ongoing.As a result, the model evaluation, and the various scenarios related to the sustainable tourism development for the biodiversity-based tourism villages will be discussed in the forthcoming paper.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Causal loop diagram of biodiversity tourism for sustainable village revitalization

Table 1 .
Stakeholders of responsible tourism management