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
