**Abstract**

The management of ecotourism in local communities and protected areas faces the challenge of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development indicators, based on a system that integrates political institutional coordination, coherent local participation, endogenous potential, ecotourism and multidimensional interpretations. The objective of the research is to design a procedure for the management of ecotourism that contributes to the development of the protected areas of Cuando Cubango, in Angola. Thus, a procedure was designed for the management of ecotourism, with 5 stages: preparation; diagnosis; the definition of key factors; the objectives and actions and the evaluation and monitoring, which are fed back. Scientific and empirical methods were used, as well as research instruments for data collection and processing. To assess the procedure, the criteria of experts who classified it as high were used. That is, it is relevant for decision-making in Cuando Cubango.

**Keywords:** Management, ecotourism, development, protected areas

#### **1. Introduction**

The challenging planetary changes caused by Covid-19 exposed the sensitivity and vulnerability of today's world, where integration through globalization can pose a threat to its continuity, but also, it can be a fundamental factor to ensure its survival based on the interdependence and connectivity of countries and their peoples.

Covid-19, in 2020 and 2021, had an essential impact on wildlife conservation levels and assuaged the chances of animals being infected by the disease [1]. Although the pandemic lowered tourism rates from 4% in 2019 to 1% in 2020, due to the decrease of nearly 700 million visits in 2020, this segment may be the best adapted to the pandemic from new forms of management, which aim to redefine the demand for these areas.

Africa postulates an attraction that will be able to receive new tourists in time of covid, based on its diversity in geographical and natural riches. But Angola, based on the softer biosecurity measures it has been adopting to curb COVID, ecotourism in protected areas will be better inserted. For this, the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Environment proposed that it is necessary to define a concise, realistic and integrative management strategy of tourism, which contains micro-actions, which generate macro results. From the above, this research is derived, which assumes the need to

propose a consistent, integrative management capable of boosting ecotourism. The province of Cuando Cubango, the field of our study, comprises 40% of protected areas, with abundant natural, historical and cultural resources.

In contradiction, it does not have a procedure with actions that guides the management of ecotourism in its protected areas, which conditions the existence of a theoretical-methodological tool for decision-making on the management of policies to contribute to sustainable development at the local level. In reality there is no defined management process, since it has been dismantled and does not have enough methodological body to maintain its existence, so this management system needs to be redefined and refined according to insufficient knowledge of local potential and strategies The situation exposed led to identify the following general objective: Design a procedure to improve the management of ecotourism that contributes to the development of the protected areas of Cuando Cubango.

#### **2. Methodology**

This is a descriptive research, inductive and deductive. To achieve the proposed objectives, scientific methods were used: analysis-synthesis; historical – logical; systemic – structural, and the other categories of empirical methods: observation; survey; documentary review and statistical-mathematical methods.

At first, the instruments were designed and tested to collect the primary information. Then the survey and the present observation were applied to communities of six municipalities of the study (Dírico, Kalai, Kuangar, Cuchi, Menongue and Cuito Cuanavale), which represents 66.6% of the nine municipalities of Cuando Cubango.

The research has an intentional sample, composted by community leaders who inhabit the protected areas of the province of Cuando Cubango (**Table 1**).

The article is divided into two parts: the first is the theoretical foundation on the management of ecotourism as a way of contributing to local development and in the second part is the design of the proposed procedure for the management of ecotourism for the development of the protected areas of Cuando Cubango. The relevance of the procedure shall be assessed through the expert judgment.


**Table 1.** *Sample size (n) by strata.*

## **3. Theoretical rationale**

The research assumes that ecotourism, because of a historical event, arose from the need to avoid threats of varying order to natural environments. Faced with this threat, the Mexican ecologist raised the need to establish a type of tourism that would curb the growing exploitation through mass tourism in the cultural and natural environment and that would mean a potential for local development [2–7].

One of the most notable examples was Africa. In 1960, Western began working to address the problem of natural resource conservation in the Kilimanjaro area
