Ecotourism in Mediterranean Destinations: From Monitoring and Planning to Promotion and Policy Support

Overview and objectives

Summary:

DestiMED PLUS is the next step on a journey to evolve the Mediterranean into an internationally recognized ecotourism destination, where regions support protected areas through improved planning,…

DestiMED PLUS is the next step on a journey to evolve the Mediterranean into an internationally recognized ecotourism destination, where regions support protected areas through improved planning, policies, and promotion strategies that link tourism with conservation. The project builds on the success of MEET and DestiMED projects, which supported Med protected areas to leverage ecotourism for sustainable development and conservation. DestiMED PLUS upscales its vision toward regions, strengthening the enabling environment that ecotourism needs to thrive in the Med. The project´s game-changing approach establishes a consortium of regional administrations representing conservation and tourism, which will work together to make protected area tourism more sustainable. This new platform will allow them to exchange ideas, strengthen policies, and develop an integrated ecotourism model which will be adopted by their territories.The project will capitalize on DestiMED´s monitoring tools by developing an innovative methodology to evaluate ecotourism´s socio-economic impacts, with an eye toward measuring the Sustainable Net Impact of ecotourism products, ensuring they provide positive overall value to communities in and around protected areas on islands and in sparsely populated areas. An online capacity building tool will also be produced to improve competencies of SMEs in key areas, while strengthening the management capacities of local and regional authorities.

Objective:

1 Establish a Mediterranean Ecotourism Consortium (MEC) of regions The MEC represents the interests and the political agenda of both the tourism and conservation departments. It will be formed by…

1 Establish a Mediterranean Ecotourism Consortium (MEC) of regions
The MEC represents the interests and the political agenda of both the tourism and conservation departments.
It will be formed by the 9 regional project partners, involving administrations from both tourism and conservation.

2 DestiMED PLUS Standard for Ecotourism in Med PAs
Standard to support Pilot Actions to holistically measure and monitor the impacts of ecotourism itineraries in their territories. The result will capitalize on existing DestiMED standard and monitoring tools to make them more integrated, holistic, accessible, and user-friendly.
Expand the DestiMED ́s Ecological Footprint approach by integrating it with a methodology for measuring socio-economic, governance and conservation indicators.

3 Mediterranean Ecotourism roadmap for regional PAs
Overseen by the RECs, pilot actions will be implemented to test the joint coordination, planning and promotion of ecotourism products in PAs.
Through the actions of the Regional Ecotourism Coordination tables (REC), pilots will test and assess the governance structures that better support the integration of policies, as well as identify common gaps and policy development needs to be synthesized into a policy road map for each region. These will also be integrated into a single Mediterranean policy document, provides guidelines for policy-makers as to how to act upon them.