The European Charter for Sustainable Tourism in protected areas of Archimed regions integrated with EMAS, Agenda 21 and Ecolabel
The project ARCHICHARTER promotes the improvement of Parks environment through the implementation of the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism (Charter) in parks of the ARCHIMED area, where tourism is a significant economic activity but can be a threat. With the Charter the project aims at promoting cooperation among Parks and private and public stakeholders, in order to define a common Strategy for sustainable tourism development and for the introduction of shared Plan for Action. The project promotes a transnational approach to tourism creating new skills and market opportunities. Tourism is fundamental for economy in Mediterranean area with strong natural, cultural and traditional values, where natural systems and human activities are interdependent, and economic activities strongly influence the ecosystems status, hence the need to adopt a perspective which takes into account these inter-relations in local development actions. This concern may find an useful tool in the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism (Charter), a strategic instrument jointly defined by Europarc, the EU DGXI and IUCN for promoting sustainable tourism in protected areas. The Charter considers every local resource as the core of tourist attractiveness and, therefore, compels park administrators, tourist operators and all relevant stakeholders to set up a network to jointly define tourism development strategies combined with environment protection and to valorize cultural heritage. Within the ARCHIMED area no parks still joined the Charter. The project ARCHICHARTER aims at enhancing Charter’s implementation, stimulating public/private synergies inside the parks and among parks of different regions. Moreover, the project aims at integrating the Charter with elements of additional tools such as EMAS, Local Agenda 21, Ecolabel. Project partners are mainly administrators of protected areas or with Nature 2000 sites located in areas of tourist relevance, in need to develope a strategy for managing tourism in order to prevent consequences of tourism pressures. ENEA will be responsible for the scientific quality of project’s implementation with the support of Europarc, (the body envisaged by EU for Charter implementation) and the Italian National Competent Body which has the responsibility of Ecolabel diffusion.