Hybrid tourism for sustainable land use and development of post-conflict villages in Puthukkudiyiruppu, Northern Province, Sri Lanka

Hybrid tourism is posited as a nexus of tourism models that has economies of scale, is environmentally and socioeconomically sustainable and can influence socioeconomic development with sustainable livelihood and land use practices. This thesis uses a mixed methods approach to explore the potential for hybrid tourism in Puthukkudiyiruppu, Northern Province, Sri Lanka with land use and land cover analysis, surveys of households, tourism industry participants and pilot tourist groups and participatory scenario planning.

Four chapters are used to present findings. The first uses Geospatial Information Systems to analyse land use and land cover change and shows significant changes in the past with post-conflict settlements and predicts reductions in natural capital with growth in settlements and agriculture. The second uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and shows how nonfulfillment of basic and growth needs is driving land use practices, and that a transition to sustainable land use with sustainable farming is therefore unlikely despite climate and social impacts. The third uses Participatory Scenario Planning and the Three Horizons Framework and identifies that maintaining the status quo or incremental change with existing land use practices and conventional farming to support a growing population is unsustainable, whereas transformative change with alternative development pathways such as hybrid tourism is a plausible futures scenario. The fourth shows that hybrid tourism is a viable alternative sustainable development pathway to fulfil needs for human wellbeing and influence sustainable land use practices. The finding show that hybrid tourism has potential to increase tourism in a post-conflict area, influence the socioeconomic development of rural farming communities, improve wellbeing, transform unsustainable land use practices and ultimately support the communities to navigate a challenging future.