A growing number of travellers are aware that the impact of their travels can be either positive or negative on host communities and environments. Tourism operators have a vested interest in helping maintain the health, prosperity and cultural vibrancy that makes their destinations attractive to visitors and are recognising that they have a responsibility to give back to the places that support them.
Eco tourism is seen as the first step in the journey to help ensure travel does not occur to the detriment of environment. However, eco tourism generally strives to only conserve the natural environment (flora and fauna), which can come at the expense of the communities that live there.
Sustainability is all about balance and recognising that if host communities are prevented from prospering, protection of the natural environment will be undermined. Sustainable tourism provides a superb way to help alleviate poverty and offers local farmers, poachers, fishermen and the like with an alternative means of income. Retrained, these people can become green guardians that use their expert local knowledge to grow awareness of the unique attributes of fragile ecosystems and help revegetate cleared areas back to their natural state. According to the World Tourism Organization, "sustainable tourism is tourism that leads to the management of all resources in such a way that economic, social and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity and life support systems." In practice, sustainable tourism practices involve every level of business, every staff member, every customer, every supplier and every local.
From the hotel concierge, to housekeeping, and the interpretive guide, simple behavioural changes can result in profound reductions of our environmental footprint. A lack of awareness of how to travel lightly is no longer an excuse; it is a responsibility we must all willingly shoulder.
According to the United Nations Environmental Program, sustainable tourism should:
- Make optimal use of environmental resources that constitute a key element in tourism development, maintaining essential ecological processes and helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity.
- Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, conserve their built and living cultural heritage and traditional values, and contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance.
- Ensure viable, long-term economic operations, providing socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders that are fairly distributed, including stable employment and income-earning opportunities and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty alleviation.
Keeping a triple bottom line focus (delivering environmental, social and economic outcomes) is not only good for the planet, but helps businesses to improve efficiencies and profitability.
What's in a logo?
Take any company's green credentials; what do they really mean? How good is good? How does "best practice" get to be the best?
From the outside, it's impossible to tell the difference between green wash and green credentials. Following is an overview of what companies should be doing as a minimum if they want to be considered credible in this field:
- Does the organisation quantitatively benchmark its success? Whenever an organisation is on a path to sustainability, it must know first where it has come from in order to measure the success of where it is going. Benchmarking the effectiveness of its operations is the only way to determine the effectiveness of sustainability practices and projects. Benchmarking allows operators to see if their actions are really up to scratch, or just making them feel good while achieving little.
- Are their claims transparent, adhering to scientific standards and are they operating according to an internationally accepted standard?
- Do they display evidence that they have been independently audited by a qualified third party auditor on a regular basis to ensure their “best practice” standards remain exactly that?
- Is the technology they use to measure, monitor and manage their footprint merely a spreadsheet or a system that permits year-on-year monitoring?
- What other companies use this same certification system / logo? Are they the best in the market or merely part of a group that is applying the lowest possible standards in order to claim green marketing benefit?
- Are their operational systems compliant with the very latest international GHG emission standards and reporting protocols?
That's a lot for the average punter to try and fathom and, unless you're in the industry, may read like gobblety-gook! That's why Travel Wild has partnered with EarthCheck; the world's leading environmental management, benchmarking and certification program, used by more than 1000 organisations in over 70 countries.
The EarthCheck logo offers consumers a fast and simple way to recognise a credible, verified sustainable tourism operator at a glance.
EarthCheck is an environmental management system that was created by the world's largest sustainable tourism cooperative research centre in Australia. It adheres to the principles of Agenda 21, as defined at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
EarthCheck is used by whole communities; such as Kaikoura (NZ), Snaefellsnes(Iceland) and Huatalco (Mexico).
Government entities and schools use it, theme parks (Xel-Ha, Dreamworld, and Water Bom to name but a few), and even airports such as those in Kuala Lumpur and Auckland us it.
Perhaps the greatest uptake though is from leading accommodation providers such as ACCOR, InterContinental Hotels Group, Sandals Hotels & Resorts, Langham Hotels International, Taj, Banyan Tree and Carlson. Between them, they account for tens of thousands of beds, millions of guest nights and the ability for each staff member, guest and traveller to leave a positive ripple in their wake!
So the next time you're planning to travel and weighing up where to flex your purchasing muscle to help bring about a sustainable outcome for a destination you love, ask it they're EarthCheck Certified!