Launching, Building, and Maintaining a Community
Join us to help build a Sustainable Tourism Community of Learning and Practice with international protected area managers, non-governmental organization staff, private sector partners, and others who share a common vision of sustainable tourism as a means to conserve these special places and benefit the local communities whose livelihoods rely on them.
This shared vision motivates us to work together through discussions, experiences, and stories to learn about and implement policies and actions that enhance opportunities for transformative recreational experiences of visitors, build community resilience, and protect the ecological diversity upon which nature-based tourism is based.
Each year, a new cohort will help grow the community, while ongoing opportunities for engagement will help maintain it.
As part of each new cohort, over a period of 16 months you and your colleagues will explore:
- What makes tourism programs and activities sustainable.
- How to apply systems thinking to the challenges and opportunities posed by sustainable tourism in protected areas.
- Ways to identify and promote justice, equity, diversity, accessibility, and inclusion (JEDAI) for all who depend on and visit the protected areas.
- How to lead the planning, development, and delivery of tourism services in protected areas.
This in-depth component of the program will be followed by a series of periodic webinars, podcasts, virtual conferences, and opportunities to stay connected via social media platforms.
Program Content
During the program, the following topics and themes are covered:
- Planning and management for tourism and public use in protected areas.
- Best practices in legal and policy frameworks to support sustainable tourism and conservation.
- Tourism and climate change: resilience, mitigation, adaptation, and education.
- Public-private partnerships and the roles of government, local communities, businesses, non-governmental organizations, indigenous people, universities, and other collaborators.
- Tourism infrastructure, facility development, and industry value and supply chains.
- Interpretation and environmental education.
- Systems thinking and leadership.