Embargo Period

8-4-2026

Degree Name

MA in Sustainable Development

First Advisor

Joseph Lanning, Ph.D

Second Advisor

Michael Hill, Ph.D

Abstract

This study examines how Kelabit community members in Bario, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo define and practice sustainability within community-based tourism (CBT), and how these local understandings align with or diverge from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study used a thematic analysis drawing on fifteen semi-structured interviews with Kelabit community members, supplemented by tourist questionnaires and document analysis of online tourism materials. Four themes emerged: sustainability as collective stewardship; community decision-making and collaboration; cultural identity as the core of tourism; and equity, participation, and the limits of growth. Findings suggest that Kelabit community members hold a holistic, relational, and intergenerational understanding of sustainability embedded in adat, kinship obligation, and environmental ethics. Alignment is strongest with SDG 15, SDG 12, SDG 2, and SDG 13, but community practice in each case incorporates cultural and relational dimensions that formal indicators are not designed to capture. The most significant divergence is with SDG 8, whose growth orientation sits in direct tension with community preferences for intentional, community-governed limits on tourism scale. This study contributes to literature on indigenous sustainability and CBT by demonstrating that community-defined sustainability can predate, extend beyond, and challenge global frameworks — and that the gap between Bario's sustainability practice and the SDGs is not a gap in practice, but a gap in recognition.

Disciplines

Development Studies | Social and Cultural Anthropology

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