Sustainable Agrotourism Curating by Conferring Community Involvement in Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

The highest number of tourists’ arrivals recorded in Cameron Highlands was 728, 121 people. In 2014, the number declined by 30% due to landslide events. The main question for this paper is what can be implemented into the tourism strategic planning that may benefit local communities and promote sustainable tourism development in Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands. The lack of sustainable practice has caused the highlands to degrade and the incentives for agriculture increases in parallel with unequal benefits for locals. There are two key socio economic sustainable tourism concepts which are; community involvement in decision-making and community involvement in tourism benefits sharing being proposed in this paper. Four sets of interview questionnaires were formulated based on 4 components of respondents. Based on the results, this research highlighted that the decision-making process are to be made jointly with the government and local authority in consultation with the community representative. Amongst the recommendations is fair-trade scheme of equity in payment is for locals to benefit off tourism businesses involved in agriculture to protect their working and living environment and gain control over their future. The success of the two concepts requires commitment from all parties.


INTRODUCTION
Tourism is known to be one of largest industries to date, indirectly and unknowingly tourism is a contributing factor towards issues of global climate changes, loss of biodiversity, cultural diversity, deforestation and migration of locals. Gilpin (2009) emphasised on the four important points in developing tourism. Firstly, virtual peace amongst locals and travelling tourists and degrees of economic development. Second, although tourism possesses the capacity of economic benefits, it may lead to harm if it is not being carefully planned. Third, this is where benefits of tourism are carefully curated with respect to society, cultural traditions and environment. Fourth, tourism development has to be in conjunction with the national visions and strategy and is supported by related authorities and board committees. In regard to the points highlighted, tourism provides contribution in the forms of macro and micro economic development (Bhuiyan, Siwar & Ismail, 2013).
The tourism industry in Malaysia is experiencing a rapid economic growth over the past five decades (Borji, 2015) as seen in Figure  1. The country received 7.5 million tourist arrivals in 1995, the number rose up to 10.2 million in 2000 and has jumped to 26.8 million in 2016. The attractions of natural sightseeing and activities are seen as the major pull that brings a significant growth to the tourism development in Malaysia and is growing steadily for more than a decade benefitting the locals directly and indirectly (Isa, 2015). In the case of Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands, known for its forest reserves and plantations, the consideration of conservation is vital in preserving Cameron Highlands as one of the highlands tourist destinations with minimal impacts. This can be seen through the macro and micro development as described in the following sub topics.  Market Trends in Tearfund 2002, 19). Source: Journal of the Economic Impacts of Fair Trade in Tourism by Krause (2012).

LITERATURE REVIEW
Since the mid-1990s, the concept of sustainable tourism appeals as a prior objective in the global tourism sector (Weaver, 2014). Back in 1997, the National Ecotourism Plan was created in accordance with Malaysia's initiative based on the ecotourism definition announced by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) ).

Macro Development of Sustainable Tourism
At macro level of economic development, tourism acts as the catalyst in terms of generating revenues, equity in payment, commodity cost and contribution in the gross domestic production (GDP) (Bhuiyan, Siwar & Ismail, 2013). Figure 2 shows a table of tourism development's impacts based on economic aspects. The first point highlighted on revenue which is the financial income as well as receipts and earnings of a certain organisation (Investopedia, 2003). It describes how revenue generation is done by promoting tourism practices. Moreover, equity in payment is related to fair trade which is linked to commodities. When the fair-trade mark first emerged, it has been known widely in various sectors and known to be appreciated (Krause, 2012). As stated by Krause (2012), Tearfund (2002) conducted researches that shown local goods produced in a producer-friendly process attract consumers that are willing to pay higher. This means that the locals or host country will gain more benefits. Fair trade in tourism has no standards or labelling of fair trade products, thus, they are still in the midst of developing phase (Krause, 2012). Fair trade refers to goods or products at better prices in a decent working environment accompanied by fair trade terms for all farmers and workers (Fairtrade Foundation, 2016). Fairtrade Foundation (2016) based in UK emphasised the concept of supporting the communities' development involved in farming protect their working and living environment and gain control over their future to improve their living conditions in the thriving industry. Fair trade derives from two developments as mentioned by Bowen (2001, 35) which areprofessionalisation in the movement and strong dimensions (Krause, 2012 Finland has shown success in their fair-trade products of 30% sales increment, one of it being coffee production. In relations to equity, this portrays how important professionalisation and commitment is when it comes to fair trade. With the fair-trade awareness to date, Malaysia agriculture or agro tourism should implement these schemes. Hence, an ongoing effort of professionalisation in the movement needs to be emphasised to avoid economic imbalance and environmental loss in Cameron Highlands. As argued by Abidin (1999), the National Ecotourism Plan guidelines for Malaysia do not portray the specific mechanisms in monitoring and evaluating the future management for sustainable tourism. "There are also no criteria and indicators developed for sustainable tourism management and biological diversity conservation in the protected areas of Malaysia", said Abidin (1999). Due to the lack of criteria and indicator for sustainable tourism development, Malaysia has its fair share of challenges to ensure development is compatible with conservation of the protected areas. Based on what  highlighted in one of her Journals of Ecotourism, study by Lim (1999) (discussed in Mohamed, 2002) discovered the issues faced by travel agencies while advertising ecotourism: • The agency is of 4 to 6 years old working experience • The eco-travelling tourist guides have no proper training and education; does not own proper license for areas that are protected. • Only 11.9% of travel agencies inform the tourists regarding the purchase of banned items. • Less than 46% of travel agencies are unware of the local community • 30.8% have no relations towards the government • 10 out of 15 travel agencies do not understand the concepts of ecotourism • 80% of the activities are not associated with the social, cultural or environmental aspect

Micro Development of Sustainable Tourism
At the micro level of economic development, the impetus of tourism stems from community involvement, income distribution, employment opportunities, carrying capacity and sustainable regional developments (Bhuiyan, Siwar & Ismail, 2013). The micro level focuses more on the impact it brings to the society, culture and environment.
Society aspects of tourism revolve around the local community. In order for tourism to provide stability through community involvement, there are three main constituencies' actions that can be engaged. As mentioned by Honey & Gilpin (2009), they are host communities, host governments and foreign stakeholders.
On sustainable tourism curating through community involvement, this study shall focus on ways to engage the host communities. Host community is a fundamental component in tourism development (Lorton Consulting, 2011). The component consists of three key subject matters which are the tourist, the resource and the host. Cameron Highlands is known for its nature tourism, and activities related to the natural possession there bring impacts towards the host community. In this paper, the host community in Cameron Highlands refers to the local community, Orang Asli and foreign workers. In order to partake effectively for stability, tourism activities should respect local culture and environment. As for the host governments, described by Honey & Gilpin (2009), their role is to establish national tourism strategies with robust laws to provide protection over tourist sites and for the people who work in the tourism industry. Apart from that, host governments should address constraints and bottlenecks in tourism industry to ensure that this sector is not being undermined at local or national levels by overlapping departments. Lastly, host governments should acquire creative marketing strategy of the tourism industry as it the industry is getting competitive.
Community involvement can be built through skills, mastery and extensive knowledge in a plantation, forestry and farming by the host community. The population of Cameron Highlands based on the year 2000 Census is 30, 495 and in the year 2010 Census increased to 38, 471 data from Department of Statistics Malaysia (2010). The population includes the legal foreign workers and can be seen in Figure 3 Salleh, 2010). The remaining are mostly Malays and Chinese. The locals no longer find the income distribution of working in the agriculture sectors reasonable. The distribution range of income is between RM501-RM1500 for the 42% of the working class, and 38% of them receives less than RM500 monthly (Salleh, 2010). This results to the locals finding better job opportunities at nearby cities causing an influx of foreign legal and illegal workers to Cameron Highland.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study will highlight the environmental constraints and limitations and suggest solutions on how curation tourism development with strong community involvement through a suitable tourism programme may remedy and enhance the environment.
Through appropriate content curation, the tourism programme with community involvement is to demonstrate how it can be one of the sustainable economic drive forces with respect to the social and environmental aspects. The aim is to raise awareness on the environmental impacts of a highland area and educates the locals on nature-based tourism or agro based tourism and offer better pay to the locals of Cameron Highlands.
The sequence of the methodological stage is site observation, identify target group, formulation of questionnaire and pilot test. Purposeful samplings was employed by selecting those involved or have acquired knowledge in the field relating to tourism, tourism management, highlands, environmental impact assessment and community development. They are the head departments of the local authority, planners, community representatives/village headman, nongovernmental organisations (NGO), engineers, environmental managers and professionals of tourism management and business expertise.

Site Observation
Site observation is carried out through self-site observation supported with desk-top research, image-based research and secondary data from related organisations and other researchers. The site visit to Cameron Highlands is to study the existing condition of Tanah Rata and Cameron Highlands and observe the local environment and setting as a growing tourist attraction and destination area.
The observation is to examine the impacts of tourism in terms of social, environmental and economic aspects. Through site observation, the questionnaires are formulated and prepared to also meet the expected outcomes out of each of the research objective.

Identify Target Group
The study is broken down into several fields to select participants based on their knowledge and characteristics. This sampling method is to select professionals from different field to provide specific knowledge that are related and deemed to be relevant to the study. Table 1 briefly describes the expertise and expected outcome of each field. Subsequently to site observation and pilot test, the questionnaires are improved based on the site condition and target group for the actual interview to be carried out. This field is to gain an understanding on a community-based organization and their initiatives on the social, economic and environmental aspects. It is also to identify their views on community-based tourism and eco-tourism management.

Respondents
The respondents comprised of three (2) engineers, one (1) environmental managers, one (1) community representative to represent Tanah Rata, one (1) to two (2) from nongovernmental organisation representing Cameron Highlands, two (2) government officers from the local authority, one (1) to two (2) planners and one (1) professional from the tourism management field.
The interviews for all four components are open-ended questionnaires and designed based on the references of related expertise to meet their characteristics, knowledge and practical interests. Different sets of questionnaires are prepared based on their expertise, however, questions regarding community involvement, development and community interests were repeated in all four components to get a firm understanding of the views on tourism as well as the community in Tanah  Insufficient time in data collection and securing interviews were the main constraints; hence restrictions was to only 1-3 interviews per field study to establish substantial data.

Approach
A qualitative approach is selected in order to further understand the responses from each participant based on the formulation of questionnaire. ii) Environmental education program is part of the ecotourism package; iii) Livelihood must benefit more the local community than outside entrepreneurs; iv) The local government supports the ecotourism project through ordinances and resolutions; and v) The Management Board (community-based) and appropriate government agencies, support the project through strict enforcement of environmental laws; vi) Experience and product management should follow principles and practices associated with ecological, socio-cultural and economic sustainability.

RESULTS & FINDINGS
The findings are based on the outcome of the interview process and sessions held with selected participants divided into four components. The key themes of each component are described as the followings: -

Long-Term Plan for Community Engagement and Involvement
R1 described the community involvement programme from a landscape perspective while R2 described the community, involvement based on the health and municipality perspective. Both respondents are focused more on long-term plan with programmes being held annually

Resources and Budgets for Suitable Tourism Programme
R1 described development fund as one of the resources to develop tourism programme while R2 described the funds from income tax as one of the resources. Based on the Local Agenda of LA 21, there is an amount provided by the Ministry of Local Government and Housing.

Goals of Sustainable Community-based Tourism Programme
R3 described the goal is to upraise the socioeconomic status of the community. R5 described the goal is create an awareness for the communities for a clean environment.

Issues and Impacts of Tourism to the Community
R8 described land clearing to be an impact towards tourism and community.

Suitable Tourism Programme with Community Involvement
R8 described the replanting of trees programme which was mentioned before by the local authority. He felt that the negative impacts of media exaggerating the environmental issues affected the locals' business here.

Resources for Suitable Tourism Programme
R9 described that by giving empowerment to them is important. R10 described that a certain budget shall be provided by the local authority. R9 described that the implementation of tourism programme with community involvement needs to be emphasised more on educational training for the locals.
R10 described in terms of environmental aspect, forests for keen tourists can be visited but it should be undisturbed.

Opinions of NGO on Tourism Programme or services with Community Involvement in Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands
R9 described that the agricultural industry offering tourism products should benefit the locals and allow them to have equity benefits.
R10 described similar traits when it comes to allowing the locals to fairly benefit from the local produce.

The most important type of resources is empowerment by the community of Orang
Asli. This is because they know better of what they need and is best to let them handle it. After all, they have been looking after our forests for years and it is their place of living and issues do not arise because of them. The problem here is, our local communities who are clearing forests as part of our profit. In terms of money, they do need it but very minimal and utilise their surroundings more. Give them power, give empowerment to them that is the best policy.

Technical Challenges of developing a tourism programme with the host community at Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands
R9 described how land status of TOL lands need to be enforced and its issuance needs to be controlled.
R10 described the challenges in terms of water and electrical outage due to the number of tourists. It needs to be managed accordingly or have the tourism services organised suitably.

DISCUSSION
A framework containing the principles in order to manage protected areas such as Cameron Highlands is developed for policymakers and researchers in sustainable tourism or community-based tourism field to enable sustainable practices in tourism development. It is based on the findings from interview sessions and the limits of acceptable change planning framework by Eagles & McCool (2002).

Principle 1: Objective for Suitable Sustainable Tourism Management
By setting achievable and progressive objective or objectives as an initiative towards the tourism management of protected forest areas and controlling the number of visitors. Mc Cool (2002) described that objectives are made in order to provide definitive statements towards the management. For instance, management of the highlands' tourism products or highlands' tourism services of an eco-sensitive area. These objectives can either be administrative policy or formal legislative statements (McCool, 2002). However, to produce an objective requires involvement from the government and local stakeholders to unanimously agree in order for the objective or objectives to be developed.

Principle 2: Temporal Tourism Environmental Impacts
There are a number of temporal impacts coming from visitors or also known as spaces used and occupied by them which are discontinued during their visitation periods. These impacts from the visitors occur offsite and are often less visible from the public however, if it is left unmanaged, it can contribute to long term environmental loss.  (McCool, 2002).

Principle 4: Setting A Limit in Tourism Management
Setting limit policy is viewed as a potential management action to control visitation and puts an emphasis in carrying capacity of the tourists' arrivals (McCool, 2002). This determines the limit of visitations in an ecosensitive area. However, implementing limit policies is a challenging task that includes rationing techniques or allocation deemed to be appropriate for it to be carried out in a certain area.
Based on the Standards of Ecotourism by Weaver & Lawton (2007), in an eco-sensitive area or any tourism activities related to the natural surroundings and environment, in order to implement sustainability in tourism development, maintenance of carrying capacity needs to be carried out.

Example:
'What the community needs assessment' is carried out by asking the questions as described by Muegge (2016) in effective community decision making where the local community is the host community.

a)
What is needed? The current state of tourism in Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands remains as a tourist attraction area. However, it does not hold any attributes showing a solid or effective community involvement in tourism or traits of community-based tourism which is needed in an eco-sensitive tourist attraction area.

b)
How many have the need? Resources can be in various forms. For instance, homestay programme or eco-tourism tour guided by the community, the government can consider some of tax exemption on the revenue to encourage tourism. As for community-based tourism operated by indigenous people, government shall provide amenities such as build community halls, upgrade amenities, acquire and maintain some equipment like generator sets in areas with no electricity.

c)
Who are they?
The process requires commitments from local authority, Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), local communities and the local stakeholders.

d)
How important is it that this decision/need to be filled? Empowerment to the community of Orang Asli or locals is important. This is because they know better of what they need and is best to let them handle it.

e)
What is already being done? The programme that has been implemented is in Taman Sedia Village, Cameron Highlands based on the concept of homestay which is being supported by the Resident Representative Office (ROO) together with the local hosts.

Community Involvement in Terms of Sharing of the Tourism Benefits
Fair-trade schemes of equity in payment are a scheme that favours the local people to benefit off tourism businesses. The scheme is to support the locals involved in agriculture to protect their working and living environment and gain control over their future in tourism businesses. As described by Camp & Goodman (2005), the issues of fair-trade may seem trivial when compared to other issues faced by the indigenous community such as forced relocation, language barrier, loss of traditional lands and lack of access to health and educational government services. There are financial challenges faced by the indigenous community that they do not have control over.

Suitable Tourism Programme for Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands
Community Tourism Programme 1: The Homestay concept This helps to link the cultural heritage and conservation and introduce the sustainable rural living in Cameron Highlands. This can be seen as a tourism product offering tourism services with local hosts. The selected homes are refurbished to an extent where it is at a presentable level for tourists to stay. The families attached to the program shall be trained with sanitation and hygiene knowledge, nutritional meal preparations, waste disposal and handling visitors or guests. By letting the families be the host communities, community tourism will help to empower the families involved economically and exchange cultural values amongst local hosts and tourists.

Community Tourism Programme 2: Market Access for Emerging Local Tourism Entrepreneurs
Local tour operators providing tourism services run and managed by the local communities can provide market access for emerging local tourism entrepreneurs. They range from tour packages, accommodation and travelling packages. It is best to allow the local communities to provide the travelling and tour package as they possess local culture and a broader knowledge on Cameron Highlands.

Community Tourism Programme 3: The visitors experience
Local festival and events can be held for annual calendar to enhance visitors' experience. Help and support from local stakeholders and local authority to attract more tourists.

CONCLUSION
Curation of tourism development with community involvement in mind as the market growth to benefit both locals and tourists' travelling experience without deserting the social and environmental aspects is the key concerns in this paper. There were a number of key terms having the same definition or meaning coming from different components when it comes to suitable tourism programme.
The key terms that are similar are; local residents invite tourists to discover local habitats or homestay with programmes that provide job opportunities and entrepreneurship to locals, protection of nature and low impact on environment and culture.
Tourism without a doubt appears to be vital in the global economy (Honey & Gilpin, 2009). Tourism impacts the society, if not for the better. It helps to diversify the sociocultural background and promotes local entrepreneurship. With thorough study, community forums and careful planning, the sustainability of Cameron Highland can be achieved.
Through curated tourism programmes, not only will the locals acquire knowledge but will see the potential of local ventures.