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Climate Change

Practical Measures to Address Climate Change

The best available scientific evidence predicts that climate change resulting from human activity will impact upon our environment, key tourism assets and way of life in the short to medium term.

Climate change and the suggested impacts on our environment have already generated an increased share of media coverage and public awareness both here in Australia and internationally, particularly in Western Europe. In the short term, this awareness and the consumer response it generates has the potential to impact upon tourism demand.

The South Australian Tourism Alliance (SATA) in association with its industry partners, is seeking to address the issue of Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change through the introduction of EC3 Global’s Green Globe Environmental Certification program within South Australia (SA). 

The intention is for individual operators, local authorities and state and regional tourism organisations to move towards Green Globe Certification with the overall aim of having South Australia assume a leadership position on the Environmental and Climate Change agenda.

The key objectives in fostering a sustainable tourism industry in South Australia include:

  • To develop a sustainability platform for access by Tourism operators which gives practical information on sustainability methods and programs which can be implemented within their businesses and across the tourism industry
  • Be recognised as a sustainable tourism destination
  • Enable operators to demonstrate their CSR credential to all stakeholders
  • Provide a practical solution for tourism operators to assist them to meet some of the objectives of the Federal Government’s Climate Change initiatives.

Tourism, Climate Change & Sustainability

Sustainable Tourism programs can make all tourism business, towns and even destinations more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable by building environmental and cultural awareness and practice into all aspects of the travel product and its consumption e.g. general sustainability in tourism.

The South Australia Tourism Alliance, (SATA) understands that to achieve recognition as a Sustainable Tourism destination; the South Australian tourism industry will require engagement with the local community, through industry associations and the broader industry sector.  With this objective in mind it has partnered with EC3 Global to offer education, self assessment, benchmarking and accredited world standard programs to the tourism industry.

EC3 Global is an International Environmental Management and Advisory Group who specialise in Destination Management, delivering sustainability outcomes and Triple Bottom Line Strategies. EC3 Global had its beginnings in 1987 and was Australia's first national tourism research centre. It is now owned by the Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre (STCRC), the world's largest source of research on sustainable tourism.

EC3 Global provides a pathway for clients to set and achieve sustainability objectives with a triple-bottom-line focus and implement programmes to achieve these objectives. Its Consulting Unit is supported by a Systems and Technology team who deliver both off-the-shelf and tailored benchmarking tools, certification systems and business applications in the form of portals and databases. 

This the internationally recognised Green Globe certification program and the Earthcheck CO2 benchmarking systems. 

How To Get Involved

SATA and EC3 have structured a series of positive actions that you can take
to get your business, town, or district involved.

The process begins with education, moves into self assessed benchmarking, to formal benchmarking and into accredited schemes within the Earthcheck and Green Globe programs and formally addressing carbon emissions.

The process looks like this:

Climate Change Initiative Diagram

  1. Education. Things are moving quickly in the area of Climate Change  and Sustainability with a great deal of information available from  multiple sources. Discussions on the science involved vary greatly with  innumerable schemes and programs emerging almost daily. Click here for some background and education.
  2. Sustainability Health Check. Download this pdf and pass a few copies to your team to complete, then get together to discuss the results, they may surprise you and help guide you and your business to the next step.
  3. Earthcheck. A modest step to some really affirmative action using the best available tools designed for the tourism industry. A positive and measurable solution to your environmental footprint. Learn More
  4. Green Globe. The world's only benchmarking, certification and performance improvement programme based on the principles for Sustainable Development agreed to by 182 Heads of Government at the United Nationals Rio Earth Summit of 1992.  Developed specifically for the tourism industry and designed to assist  organisations, communities and developments become environmentally  responsible. Learn More
  5. Green Globe Lite a global on-line program released in October, will - for the first time - provide tourism operators with a user-friendly, affordable tool to measure their business's carbon footprint and environmental performance. Learn More 

© 2008 South Australian Tourism Alliance