Ted Turner Announces Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria
Mega-entrepreneur Ted Turner announced the Partnership for Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria, a new sustainable tourism standards regime for tourism businesses, at the IUCN World Conservation Congress. Turner, founder of the United Nations Foundation, was joined by the Rainforest Alliance, The UN Environment Program and the UN World Tourism Organization and many other groups. The voluntary sustainable tourism criteria are based on best practices drawn from different standards for sustainability in use around the world today.
"Sustainability is just like the old business adage: 'you don't encroach on the principal, you live off the interest'," said Turner. "Unfortunately, up to this point, the travel industry and tourists haven't had a common framework to let them know if they're really living up to that maxim. But the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria (GSTC) will change that. This is a win-win initiative -- good for the environment and good for the world's tourism industry."
Intended as minimum standards for tourism-based businesses, sustainability experts and tourism industry representatives developed the standards over the past 15 months. More that 4,500 criteria were considered and approximately 80,000 industry stakeholders, environmentalists and government authorities contributed comments.
Intended as minimum standards for tourism-based businesses, sustainability experts and tourism industry representatives developed the standards over the past 15 months. More that 4,500 criteria were considered and approximately 80,000 industry stakeholders, environmentalists and government authorities contributed comments.
More information is available online at http://www.SustainableTourismCriteria.org