Voluntary
Initiatives for Sustainability in Tourism
The
Value Of VISIT
Eugenio Yunis, World Tourism
Organisation, Chief, Department of Sustainable Development
of Tourism. United Nations.
Sustainable Tourism: the value of the VISIT initiative
by our leading VISIT supporter
The VISIT initiative has
come at the right moment and in the right place. It concerns
Europe, where the large
majority of international and domestic tourist movements
take place, and where the consumers are more aware about
the environmental and social implications of their tourism
activities. It is also in Europe where certification
systems and eco-labels applicable to the tourism industry
were born, back in the mid-1980s, and where 15 years
later some 60 or so of these schemes co-exist, sometimes
complementing each other, sometimes competing.
From the very beginning of this initiative the World
Tourism Organisation (WTO) supported and gave advice,
when required, to the various certification schemes that
met in early 2001, to consider the possibility of co-ordinating
their efforts under one umbrella. This support was based
on the belief, expressed by the WTO at the UN Commission
on Sustainable Development in 1999, that the proliferation
of too many certification schemes could be counterproductive.
Instead, a co-ordinated effort and the definition of
common certification criteria could help to make these
schemes more useful to guide consumers towards the selection
of more sustainable tourism products and services.
VISIT
is the result of careful, conscientious and dedicated work
undertaken by numerous people. ECOTRANS one of the
Associates was responsible for the inventory and evaluation
of the more than 100 certification schemes world wide,
as part of a WTO-commissioned study undertaken in 2000-2001.
The results of this study were published by the WTO under
the title “Voluntary Initiatives for Sustainable
Tourism”.
The WTO will continue to support VISIT,
whilst encouraging governments and the tourism industry
to strive for a
higher level of sustainability. Duly conceived, properly
managed and suitably co-ordinated eco-labels and certificates
can certainly contribute to make this vibrant industry
more sustainable and to better contribute to the Millennium
Development Goals.
