Community management of cultural tourism at a world heritage site: Intersections of the 'local' and 'global' at Chief Roi Mata's Domain, Vanuatu

This chapter addresses the intersecting processes of globalization and localization as they manifest in a cultural tourism business managed by Indigenous landowners in Vanuatu. The Lelema community, distributed between the two settlements of Lelepa Island and Mangaliliu, on the mainland of Efate Island, owns and manages Vanuatu’s first World Heritage Site, Chief Roi Mata’s Domain (CRMD), which was inscribed in July 2008 as a continuing cultural landscape. Alongside multiple other forces, means and agents, and in the face of intensifying global and local pressures, Lelema villagers seek to mobilise the World Heritage status of CRMD to improve both economic development opportunities (primarily through its associated local tourism enterprise, Roi Mata Cultural Tours) and local heritage conservation measures. This chapter critically examines the Lelema experience of development and conservation and unpacks the nuances and ambiguities at the intersection between local customary norms and global development and conservation agendas. The chapter also highlights alternative local perspectives on the success and failure of community-led tourism and heritage initiatives in Vanuatu.