Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council - raising the standards and benefits of sustainable tourism and ecotourism certification

Certification of sustainable tourism and ecotourism can help to reduce the negative environmental and social impacts of tourism, ensure that the tourism industry is held accountable and provide marketing benefits to those firms that meet the certification standards. Reports by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Tourism Organization (WTO) have cited the benefits of certification and many governments, NGOs and other stakeholders are introducing national, regional and international certification programs. There is consensus that the increasing numbers of certification programs would benefit from shared functions such as marketing, training and development, while supply chains and consumers would benefit from the setting of standards. Some two years ago, the Rainforest Alliance, with funding from the Ford Foundation and help from its Advisory Committees of NGOs, multilateral agencies and industry representatives, initiated a study of the feasibility of establishing an international Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council (STSC) to promote globally recognized, high-quality certification programs for sustainable tourism and ecotourism through a process of information sharing, marketing, and assessment of standards. (Certification is defined as the procedure by which the certification/awarding body gives written assurance and awards a logo (to the consumer and the industry in general) to signify that a product, process, service, or management system conforms to specified requirements. Accreditation is key to the role of a Stewardship Council, a body that grants certifying powers. In effect it certifies that the certifiers are doing their job correctly.) This report summarizes the findings over the two years of the study. During the study period, the authors documented growing international agreement about the need for a sound accreditation program to assess and help standardize the rapidly growing number of certification programs for the sustainable and ecotourism markets. The study involved a broad range of experts around the globe from grassroots and indigenous community activists to key tourism firms to high-level officials in UN and international environmental organizations. The need for a STSC was publicly endorsed at the World Ecotourism Summit (WES) and incorporated in its final communiqué. The Rainforest Alliance (and this project's Advisory Committees) acknowledges that certification and accreditation are not a panacea for all the problems associated with unsustainable tourism. Certification is one important tool currently being used and its merits and weaknesses must be recognized. However the study and the report presented hereby are intended to address specifically the feasibility of implementing a Stewardship Council as an accreditation organization for sustainable tourism and ecotourism certification. This report analyzes the state of the art in tourism certification and the lessons to be learned from accreditation in other sectors. Based on extensive consultation, it profiles key stakeholders and considers needs that the STSC can satisfy, and methods to do so. It proposes an organizational blueprint for a STSC that grows through a phased implementation to allow for bottom-up development of agendas and structures. It benchmarks the criteria used in certification at present to consider the feasibility of an international standard, and it also benchmarks principles and guidelines for managing tourism certification that can form the basis of accreditation criteria. As a result of the extensive consultation process, we propose three phases of development aimed at improving the quality of certification programs (and thus the sustainability of tourism) and address different issues affecting tourism certification. • Phase 1: STSC-Network to share information and gain consensus on priorities and processes. It is recommended that the STSC starts as a Network for a period of two years within which a wide range of stakeholders can consider the results of this feasibility study and the applicability in different regions, discuss the contents of a possible international standard and the necessary regional variations. The Network phase also gives tourism certification programs a vehicle to build trust and to take ownership of the systems proposed. • Phase 2: STSC-Association to market certified products, provide guidance to countries seeking to establish or upgrade certification programs, and reach agreement on standards and processes. The STSC-Association phase allows tourism certification programs and other stakeholders to agree on international standards and criteria and methods to assess how programs meet these standards, while benefiting from joint marketing and training that increases the exposure of the tourism certification programs and improves their performance. The Association phase is a necessary stepping-stone to allow tourism certification programs to make the necessary improvements to be able to meet accreditation requirements. • Phase 3: STSC-Accreditation to accredit and market certification programs that meet the agreed upon standards and demonstrate capacity to certify. This phase finally includes all key functions of the STSC by building on the agreements made at the Association phase and introducing the key element of accreditation. Structures from the Association are kept and the function of accreditation is outsourced to be able to maintain training and marketing functions separate from decision-making on which certification programs are accredited, and in doing so, guarantee independence and transparency and avoid conflicts of interest

Cross-continental comparison of parasite communities in a wide-ranging carnivore suggests associations with prey diversity and host density

Abstract Parasites are integral to ecosystem functioning yet often overlooked. Improved understanding of host–parasite associations is important, particularly for wide‐ranging species for which host range shifts and climate change could alter host–parasite interactions and their effects on ecosystem function. Among the most widely distributed mammals with diverse diets, gray wolves (Canis lupus) host parasites that are transmitted among canids and via prey species. Wolf–parasite associations may therefore influence the population dynamics and ecological functions of both wolves and their prey. Our goal was to identify large‐scale processes that shape host–parasite interactions across populations, with the wolf as a model organism. By compiling data from various studies, we examined the fecal prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites in six wolf populations from two continents in relation to wolf density, diet diversity, and other ecological conditions. As expected, we found that the fecal prevalence of parasites transmitted directly to wolves via contact with other canids or their excreta was positively associated with wolf density. Contrary to our expectations, the fecal prevalence of parasites transmitted via prey was negatively associated with prey diversity. We also found that parasite communities reflected landscape characteristics and specific prey items available to wolves. Several parasite taxa identified in this study, including hookworms and coccidian protozoans, can cause morbidity and mortality in canids, especially in pups, or in combination with other stressors. The density–prevalence relationship for parasites with simple life cycles may reflect a regulatory role of gastrointestinal parasites on wolf populations. Our result that fecal prevalence of parasites was lower in wolves with more diverse diets could provide insight into the mechanisms by which biodiversity may regulate disease. A diverse suite of predator–prey interactions could regulate the effects of parasitism on prey populations and mitigate the transmission of infectious agents, including zoonoses, spread via trophic interactions

Children with autism deserve evidence-based intervention

The document attached has been archived with permission from the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. An external link to the publisher’s copy is included.Jennifer J Couper and Amanda J Sampso

Behavioural and Developmental Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Clinical Systematic Review

Background: Much controversy exists regarding the clinical efficacy of behavioural and developmental interventions for improving the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We conducted a systematic review to summarize the evidence on the effectiveness of behavioural and developmental interventions for ASD. Methods and Findings: Comprehensive searches were conducted in 22 electronic databases through May 2007. Further information was obtained through hand searching journals, searching reference lists, databases of theses and dissertations, and contacting experts in the field. Experimental and observational analytic studies were included if they were written in English and reported the efficacy of any behavioural or developmental intervention for individuals with ASD. Two independent reviewers made the final study selection, extracted data, and reached consensus on study quality. Results were summarized descriptively and, where possible, meta-analyses of the study results were conducted. One-hundred-and-one studies at predominantly high risk of bias that reported inconsistent results across various interventions were included in the review. Meta-analyses of three controlled clinical trials showed that Lovaas treatment was superior to special education on measures of adaptive behaviour, communication and interaction, comprehensive language, daily living skills, expressive language, overall intellectual functioning and socialization. High-intensity Lovaas was superior to low-intensity Lovaas on measures of intellectual functioning in two retrospective cohort studies. Pooling the results of two randomized controlle

Neonatal imitation predicts infant rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) social and anxiety-related behaviours at one year

The identification of early markers that predict the development of specific social trajectories is critical to understand the developmental and neurobiological underpinnings of healthy social development. We investigated, in infant rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), whether newborns’ capacity to imitate facial gestures is a valid predictive marker for the emergence of social competencies later in development, at one year of age. Here we first assessed whether infant macaques (N = 126) imitate lipsmacking gestures (a macaque affiliative expression) performed by a human experimenter in their first week of life. We then collected data on infants’ social interactions (aggression, grooming, and play) and self-scratching (a proxy indicator of anxiety) at 11–14 months when infants were transferred into a new enclosure with a large social group. Our results show that neonatal imitators exhibit more dominant behaviours, are less anxious, and, for males only, spend more time in play at one year old. These findings suggest that neonatal imitation may be an early predictor of infant sociality and may help identify infants at risk of neurodevelopmental social deficits

Setting Global Sustainability Standards: The Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council

The proliferation of schemes to certify sustainable tourism and ecotourism across the world has not succeeded in changing purchasing patterns and consumer behavior due to the global nature of the tourism industry, both in terms of supply and demand. Following the footsteps of industries such as forestry, organic farming and fishing, tourism is now the next target for a global accreditation body to regulate claims of sustainability. This article discusses the challenges of setting global sustainability standards in a diverse industry such as tourism, and the process followed by a team of consultants to encourage a wide representation of views and realities in developing an international accreditation body for sustainable tourism and ecotourism certifiers, the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council

Setting Global Sustainability Standards: The Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council

The proliferation of schemes to certify sustainable tourism and ecotourism across the world has not succeeded in changing purchasing patterns and consumer behavior due to the global nature of the tourism industry, both in terms of supply and demand. Following the footsteps of industries such as forestry, organic farming and fishing, tourism is now the next target for a global accreditation body to regulate claims of sustainability. This article discusses the challenges of setting global sustainability standards in a diverse industry such as tourism, and the process followed by a team of consultants to encourage a wide representation of views and realities in developing an international accreditation body for sustainable tourism and ecotourism certifiers, the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council