October 29th, 2008
By John DeFore
Green Right Now
The atmospheric effects of airline flights aside, traveling to developing countries and remote ecosystems can have plenty of positive impact. But those benefits also can be wildly overstated by tourism entrepreneurs while the negative effects of flocking tourists get swept under the carpet. A new group is hoping to make the complicated pros and cons a bit easier to comprehend.
The group has a mouthful of a name — The Global Partnership for Sustainable Tourism Criteria (GSTC Partnership) — which may be inevitable given the sprawling nature of its makeup: The 27 member organizations range from divisions of the United Nations to non-profits like Conservation International and travel-oriented businesses as mainstream as Hyatt and Expedia.
The groups came together this month decide what constitutes eco-appropriate travel that will “build consumer confidence, promote efficiency, and fight greenwashing” in the rapidly growing green tourism arena.
Their first set of criteria was presented as “the minimum standard that any tourism business should aspire to reach in order to protect and sustain the world’s natural and cultural resources while ensuring tourism meets its potential as a tool for poverty alleviation.”
The standards themselves fall under four headings:
- Demonstrate effective sustainable management
- Maximize social and economic benefits to the local community and minimize negative impacts
- Maximize benefits to cultural heritage and minimize negative impacts
- Maximize benefits to the environment and minimize negative impacts — with quite a bit of detail provided on each topic.
So far, the GSTC’s efforts have to do with the supply side of green travel: Letting providers know what’s expected of them and giving people like travel agents a way of weighing options against each other.
It will likely be some time before these voluntary guidelines make their way into any sort of certification process that would give shoppers a straightforward thumbs up/thumbs down when they consider a particular destination or tour, but examining the list will still give consumers a good notion of what sort of questions they should be asking.
Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media
