Palau is pioneering a new model of sustainable tourism

In partnership with Sustainable Journey Global and Sluggish Foodstuff, the Palau Bureau of Tourism has launched a new undertaking aimed at mitigating its tourism-based mostly carbon footprint. The project’s long-term purpose is to build the island state as the world’s very first formal carbon-neutral tourism spot. With a aim on distinct methods to sustainable tourism, this sort of as promoting local foodstuff manufacturing and developing a transparent carbon management program, the task is absolutely sure to serve as an inspiration to other international locations.

Palau is a Pacific Island country that is globe-renowned for its all-natural beauty and deemed just one of the leading maritime tourism places in the environment. The archipelago is made up of about 200 normal limestone and lush volcanic islands surrounded by crystal-obvious lagoons. Unsurprisingly, scuba diving and snorkeling are some of the most well-known tourist functions in Palau, many thanks to the pristine coral reefs and an abundance of sea creatures. Jellyfish Lake, part of the island chain’s renowned Rock Islands and linked to the ocean through a sequence of tunnels, is property to tens of millions of jellyfish that migrate across the lake each working day. The therapeutic clay of the “Milky Way” lagoon is said to incorporate age-rejuvenating parts that attract locals and travellers alike.

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In 2019, there were being in excess of 89,000 worldwide travellers who visited the islands. This is appreciable, observing as the modest region only has a inhabitants of just beneath 22,000. With these substantial visitor quantities when compared to long-lasting people, the tourism business is the most important resource of financial revenue and work on the islands by much.

“If the present COVID-19 disaster has taught us something, it’s that we ought to improve our nation’s resilience to exterior threats — the greatest of which is climate adjust,” said Kevin Mesebeluu, director of the Palau Bureau of Tourism. “Palau is blessed with some of the world’s most pristine natural sources, inherited by way of society and tradition, and positioned in our belief for the long run era. We need to operate to actively safeguard them, while also investing in our individuals. Palau embraces sustainable tourism as the only route ahead in the new era of vacation, and we imagine that our vacation spot can and should be carbon neutral.”

Palau’s important marine methods, compact dimension and dependence on tourism make it incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of climate alter. The hazards of mounting sea temperatures threaten the country’s maritime ecosystems, coastal communities and essential tourism business. As is the unfortunate scenario with quite a few vulnerable journey places, the big-scale vacationer market — irrespective of offering the main supply of livelihood for its inhabitants — is also dependable for a part of its carbon emissions and threats to neighborhood heritage web-sites.

The distant island country has relied intensely on imported food items from overseas as nicely as carbon-large airline journey and routines in the earlier, habits that the new sustainable travel undertaking plans to handle. Palau has given that taken comprehensive steps to defend its natural environment and encourage responsible tourism.

Once these kinds of a measure, considered the “Palau Pledge,” turned the world’s initially mandatory visitor eco-pledge. Upon entry, all vacationers are needed to sign a pledge promising to act in an environmentally mindful and over-all sustainable way during their travels in purchase to shield the islands for long term generations to occur. Travelers possibility a good if they are identified partaking in activities like amassing maritime existence souvenirs, feeding fish or sharks, touching or stepping on coral, littering and disrespecting area culture. The system also bans tour operators from applying solitary-use plastics and implements the world’s strictest countrywide reef-protected sunscreen conventional.

Initiatives that increase community foodstuff sourcing reduce the country’s carbon footprint and established the desired destination up for meals safety results in the occasion of pure or economic disasters. This part of the task is essential to showcasing the islands’ culinary heritage and creating up the community money options of Palau fishers and farmers. Even much better, the program will put a distinct emphasis on sustainable agricultural merchandise and female-owned enterprises.

“The speedy growth of an unsustainable vacationer field centered on damaged foods devices has been a critical driver of the local weather crisis and ecosystem destruction,” said Paolo di Croce, normal secretary of Slow Food items Intercontinental. “This task represents the antithesis, a option that strives to fortify and restore worth to neighborhood food techniques, cut down the cultural and environmental hurt caused by food imports, and boost the livelihoods of foods producers the two in Palau and over and above.”

Getting to be carbon-aware doesn’t end with lessening carbon emissions the tourism business as it is will constantly have unavoidable carbon emissions from things like transportation and outside functions. To compensate, Palau has implemented an on line carbon administration platform for its people. The system will let holidaymakers to determine a private carbon footprint linked with their trip and provide offsetting options that are in line with the country’s marine conservation and environmental restoration plans. Sustainable Travel Global estimates that the system has the potential to raise in excess of $1 million for each year for carbon-lowering initiatives.

“This undertaking has monumental opportunity to remodel the conventional tourism model and is a noteworthy action towards lessening the industry’s climate influence,” mentioned Paloma Zapata, CEO of Sustainable Vacation International. “Destinations about the environment face these similar challenges of balancing tourism development with environmental safety. Carbon neutrality is the upcoming of tourism and the route that all places should head as they recuperate from COVID-19. We commend Palau for their continued management, and hope this inspires other destinations to fortify their own local weather resilience approaches.”

+ Sustainable Journey Global

Photographs by using Sustainable Vacation Global

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