Font, X. & Sallows, M. (2002)

Setting global sustainability standards:

the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council

Tourism Recreation Research Vol.27(1)

About the authors:

Xavier Font, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council lead consultant. He is co-editor of the only textbook on tourism ecolabels, and he has written extensively on tourism ecolabelling. He is a member of the Advisory Board of PAN-Parks, a WWF project on certifying national parks in Europe, and formerly he has Project Officer for a European Union project on forest tourism certification. He has recently collaborated with the WTO in their regional Americas meeting presenting on the processes of certification and accreditation, and he is also currently helping the Tour Operators Initiative for Sustainable Tourism on the preparation of an internal document regarding tourism ecolabels. Contact Details: Centre for the Study of Small Tourism and Hospitality Firms, Leeds Metropolitan University, Calverley St, Leeds, LS1 3HE, United Kingdom, X.Font@lmu.ac.uk

Margot Sallows, University of Greenwich, UK. Consultant to the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council project. She was formerly Manager, Environmental Services at Green Globe and involved in the development and piloting of the Green Globe Standards for businesses and communities. She was previously involved in the development of environmental guidance material for the Australian tourism industry, and prior to that was employed in protected area management. In particular, she was responsible for planning and setting policies for tourism and ecotourism in national parks.

Setting global sustainability standards: the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council

Abstract

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.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this paper are those of the lead consultants contracted to

prepare the proposals for the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council, and do not

reflect the opinions of the Rainforest Alliance or the project’s Advisory Board.

Introduction

Ecotourism, sustainable tourism and other environmental claims by tourism providers

sell. These tend to portray unspoilt destinations in only in few cases consider the

needs for long term environmental management and the ethics of socio-cultural

changes. Since the nineties programs to certify environmental standards have been

introduced in some destinations and sub-sectors of the tourism industry, mainly in

Europe and linked to accommodation provision, with more recent efforts to certify

ecotourism in South hemisphere countries. Currently there are over 100 different

schemes that certify environmental quality and sustainable tourism, ranging from very

detailed and complex systems to merely promotional umbrellas. These certification

systems lack common baseline standards, procedures, criteria and exposure, creating

customer confusion and with limited marketing value.

This article reports on progress made in setting a global accreditation body in

sustainable tourism, a proposal by the Rainforest Alliance with support from the Ford

Foundation with the working title of the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council

(STSC). The STSC aims to provide a platform to set internationally agreed standards

for certification of sustainable tourism, including mainly environmental but also

social and ethical standards. This article reports on the process of operationalising the

objectives of the Rainforest Alliance and the STSC Advisory Board into a

methodology that allows for wide consultation in the North and South, across a wide

range of stakeholders, tourism businesses and current tourism certification programs,

within a limited budget and a project timeframe of 15 months.

The proposal of a Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council has to be understood

under the umbrella of globalization in as far as this body aims to create a global

system of accrediting agencies certifying tourism companies, and therefore is

proposing a systematic interrelationship of business practices and their impact on

social structures and natural resources across the world. It is for this reason that this

paper outlines some key issues arising from globalization in the tourism industry that

will have an impact on the feasibility of setting global sustainability standards, before

considering how the project of the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council can

impact on the globalization of tourism, and how its methodology has taken these

likely impacts into account.

First, the process of globalization means companies are introducing homogeneous

standards defying local differences and usually introduced by large corporations. In

developing countries, the consumer’s fear to the unknown means that Western

standards delivered by Western companies are seen as a quality stronghold. This is

also becoming true in what used to be niche segments in their efforts to appeal to a

broader market by providing easier and more comfortable access. The STSC proposal

could be easily criticized for contributing to globalization. The tourism product relies

on geographic diversity, yet at the same time the tourism industry tends to standardize

the physical presence, operational procedures and staff-customer interaction to ensure

consistency of service delivery (Burns & Holden, 1995). Operational cost savings and

quality production controls usually are the main reason for standardizing international

product marketing (Usunier, 2000). In the tourism industry quality production control

is necessary due to the heterogeneity of the product, the perception of risk and to

safety and sanitation requirements (Burns & Holden, 1995). This is an issue that has

become of prime importance to destinations dealing with European tourists since the

introduction of the 1992 Travel Package Regulations, which make the tour operator of

the European country of origin responsible for health and safety of tourists while

consuming products at the destination sold within the package. Standardized products

sold and produced by a vertically or diagonally integrated organization are then

usually embellished with a token of local flavor but consumed within the safety of a

risk-free environment.

Second, anti-competitive practices of tourism businesses in the originating markets

include tour operator’s domination and exertion of control over local suppliers and

anti-competitive practices resulting from vertical integration, reliance on foreign

investment for hotel development, control over computerized reservation systems, and

concentration and strategic alliances of air transport providers which restrict

competition in given routes (Diaz-Benavides, 2001). These problems of competition

and anticompetitive behavior originate largely in the developed countries, rather than

in developing countries: thus the developing country travel industry experiences is the

effect of the industry structure and patterns of anticompetitive behavior from these

developed countries. Tourist destinations have little negotiating power in this

situation, competitive advantage in beach products lies in price and is usually sold

through established operators; competitive advantage for specialist products lies in

differentiation, but this has to be channeled through direct sale due to traditional

distribution channels being controlled by the large operators and requiring high

volume sales to be racked, yet direct sale is not feasible in many markets (Consumers

Association UK, 1999). Setting global sustainability standards could be seen as a

process to give a positive image to large corporations that are otherwise behaving

anti-competitively.

Third, the tourism sector is a relatively easy sector to liberalize, this has already taken

place in many instances and it has received the largest number of commitments under

the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Trade liberalization will further

facilitate increased foreign direct investment in destination countries and

liberalization of transport. Economic benefits include revenues, spending and

employment. Yet if development is induced by foreign investment, it is likely to mean

increased economic leakages (WWF, 2001). Seen in this context, setting international

standards on environmental and social performance can be seen by the countries of

the South as another method for countries of the North to attach conditions to trading

agreements that limit their economic and social development.

The aim of this paper is to respond to the potential criticisms outlined above, and

suggest that instead the STSC aims to encourage effective global environmental

politics, by addressing some of the issues that Paehlke (2001:8) has identified as pre-

requisites: “1) on-going visibility of sustainability concerns… 2) a linking of equity

and environmental issues to the democratization of media access and control, 3) a

growing interest in work time reductions… and 4) the development and articulation of

global-scale environmental and social policy ideas”. The paper will start by outlining

the principles of an accreditation body, and the rationale for studying the feasibility of

a tourism accreditation body. The goal of STSC is to achieve a widely accepted set of

sustainability standards that can be meaningful and communicated to the target

audience, and at the same time are achievable by the tourism industry with good

sustainability practice despite their location, company size and organizational

structure. This paper analyzes the opportunities and also the challenges that envisaged

in the process, reflecting on wider North-South divides and the technical and political

feasibility of setting global environmental and social standards for tourism

certification and accreditation.

North-South divide issues will arise from this effort to set international standards.

Most certification programs are based in Europe, and currently target accommodation

providers; very few target transport providers or tour operators. Current ecolabels will

have a vested interest in ensuring that their standards are met, and will attempt to use

this as an opportunity to set international standards that agree with their practices.

European tour operating chains, under pressure to meet the EC’s 1992 Travel Package

Regulations will benefit from these standards, since the EC’s legislation places the

responsibility in the tour operator for the quality of the whole package, including

health and safety, at the destination’s hotels. Tourist destination governments are

likely to favor a stepped certification, where companies with lower performance can

receive a “bronze” certificate, and work their way up, yet environmental NGOs are

likely to point out that this is greenwash and that even the “bronze” standards need to

be strict, not just as an easy way in. The underlying issue throughout will be how a

system of this style should be policed, and who should finance it: governments,

applicants or the tourists or another organization. The authors reflect on how the

potential conflicts identified above have been foreseen in the preparation of a

methodology that aims for specific deliverables through a transparent process.

The proposed Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council

The feasibility study for the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council (STSC) will

investigate the viability of a global accreditation body for sustainable tourism and

ecotourism certifiers. The proposed body would be a multi-stakeholder fora that

creates market-based mechanisms to stimulate the production and consumption of

certified sustainable products. The proposals for a tourism accreditation body came

from the Rainforest Alliance, an international non-profit that pioneered sustainable

forestry certification and works closely with industry partners in forestry, tourism, and

agriculture, has been studying the current strengths and weaknesses of tourism

certification, with financial support from the Ford Foundation (see Sanabria, 2002). If

found feasible, the STSC will set international standards for certification of tourism

industry organizations that want to claim being sustainable or practicing ecotourism.

The proposal is supported by a multidisciplinary coalition in the form of an advisory

board that includes key certification and accreditation experts from World Tourism

Organisation, World Wide Fund for Nature, The International Ecotourism Society,

Ecotrans, Caribbean Alliance for Sustainable Tourism, Conservation International, as

well as representatives from a wide range of NGOs, tourism certifiers and several

internationally recognized sustainable tourism and ecotourism expert consultants. In

addition, the project involves multi-stakeholder dialogue with a wide range of

individuals and organizations globally. More information on the project can be found

at www.rainforest-alliance.org

Stewardship councils accredit certifiers based on their performance and help ensure

that certification is being conducted in an objective and transparent manner. Being

accredited works as a “license” to perform certification based upon agreed principles

and standards. Accreditation bodies develop internationally recognized brands that

facilitate consumer choice, and protect consumers, industry and certifiers against false

claims. Internally, they help certifiers in developing their schemes by becoming a

forum to share industry expertise, setting benchmarks and encouraging a

harmonization of policies, procedures, and standards. As a joint front, accreditation

bodies represent certification schemes at an international level and lobby on their

behalf. Accreditation bodies help certified companies gain access to green funds, and

attract political and financial support.

Stewardship Councils are a mechanism that goes against the economic liberal premise

of market regulation and minimum state intervention. The finite nature and

irreversible impact of tourism on natural and social attractions has proved in many

contexts that this does not work, and that the economic liberal perspective that

globalization will lead to increased efficiency and prosperity is only true for those in

control of the system. The state, and NGOs where the state is not active, must provide

the necessary infrastructure to encourage competition from a fair standpoint. One of

the premises of the economic liberal argument is that the marketplace can distinguish

between products and services on offer, and this is a task that can be allocated to

governments and NGOs in an imperfect marketplace such as tourism and hospitality.

The mechanics of certifying and accrediting in a North-South contextThe process and terminology of conformity assessment are important to set the scene

of setting global sustainability standards (Toth, 2000; Font, 2002; Honey, 2002, see

also figure 1). This process can be critically seen within a North-South debate and

raise some issues for discussion in this paper.

A standard is a document approved by a recognised body that provides for common

and repeated use of a prescribed set of rules, conditions or requirements (Toth, 2000).

Standards can be process based (that is, the implementation of a management system)

or performance based (that is where actual achievements are measured and

performance monitored against benchmarks. Standards vary across the tourism

ecolabels. The main difference is between programs that have been devised for a

relatively standardized industry or a small destination, which tend to include

benchmarks and are performance based, and those programs working at an

international or global level, which tend to focus on the use of management systems

and be process based. The criteria range between performance and process, with a few

programs using a combination of both. Performance criteria prove the commitment to

a threshold level, being minimum standards or benchmarks. These require external

and regular updating as industry moves along. They tend to be context-specific and

therefore harder to apply the same criteria across different countries or even

destinations. Process- based labels prove a commitment to improvement, rather than

to meeting certain benchmarks. These are based on the implementation of

management systems within each company, and by their own nature these are self

updating. They are generic, and transferable not only across countries but also

industries. Critics will emphasize that they are not a guarantee of sustainability, and

that the improvement can be token gestures and not necessarily where most needed

(Krut & Gleckman, 1998).

Environmental Management Systems are slowly taking over as criteria in tourism.

The global nature of tourism as an industry is fuelling this process, not only due to the

increasing number of multinational companies aiming to use the same processes

across the board, but also due to the international nature of traveling, which requires

consistent products and communication strategies. Green Globe 21, the Green

Tourism Business Scheme, the Nordic Ecolabelling of Hotels, Committed to Green

and in the near future the Blue Flag are examples. Globalization means process-based

labels will extend, and will have to include social and other sustainability elements

besides the environment. Because process-only labels are open to criticism, some of

these are introducing benchmarks to their systems to determine minimum

requirements. This increases costs, and also further increases the need for staff to be

trained and to keep paper trails.

Assessment is the process of examining, measuring, testing or otherwise determining

conformance with requirements specified in an applicable standard (Toth, 2000). The

assessment of tourism standards has its difficulties. Certification programs tend to

have few applicants, and in quite a few cases are geographically dispersed. Few

tourism certification programs are run for profit, and the majority are heavily

subsidized. The assessment is carried out in some cases by applicants themselves

(first party), in some cases by the same awarding body (second party), and only in a

limited number of cases by a third party. Thus many schemes have been discredited

as they are seen to be used merely as ‘greenwashing’, particularly those with first

party assessment. Some critics argue that even second party assessment is not truly

representative as the awarding body has a vested interest in certifying its members.

Therefore it can be said that the tourism industry has not reached the mature, more

complex systems that other industries have engaged through broader use of third party

assessment schemes.

*** insert figure 1.

The certification process is the procedure by which third party (i.e. the awarding

body) gives written assurance to the consumer (and in this case, the tourism industry

in general) that a product, process, service or management system conforms to

specified requirements (Toth 2000). Tourism certification bodies generally have an

extremely limited marketing budget and therefore limited capability to encourage

businesses to apply. Therefore with no market or industry power their ability to

change practices is limited. This can be understood as a reason to encourage

accreditation.

Accreditation bodies ‘audit the auditor’ and their capacity to certify companies and/or

products. Accrediting systems have not been set up for the tourism industry, but they

could be beneficial in the light of the diversity and multitude of tourism and

hospitality programs, making it difficult to make comparisons. Such comparison is

made even more difficult due to the lack of available tangible research and data on

each program to demonstrate benefits of certification, the fact they tend to be in their

own national language, and that focus, processes, expectations and requirements are

different. Certification is mainly used for peer recognition. Yet without accreditation,

there is limited market awareness to date, due to the limited marketing power. If there

is no awareness, there is no market acceptance (although there are isolated cases such

as the Blue Flag which as reached economies of scale in terms of applicants and

meaningful messages that have been communicated to the market). And if there is no

market acceptance, there is little chance the consumer will choose a more sustainable

travel and tourism option.

Globalization from below: global markets and local standards?Falk (1999) argues that globalization from above is normative, in that it sets one

agenda imposed from outside that subjugates the policies and actions of governments

and decision makers to comply with outside forces and trends, often to the negative

effect of vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. If globalization is a process that

cannot be effectively resisted, the key is to seek methods of globalization that avoid

declines in environmental protection and social equity (see Paehlke, 2001). One such

method can be ‘globalization from below’, a normative force coming from widely

shared consensus across societies on the need for social well-being and carrying

capacities, and respecting local conditions and identities (Falk, 1999). The STSC aims

to fit in this category, by proposing global sustainability standards that arise from

broad discussions with a wide range of participants, rather than from a top-down

approach.

Bottom-up decisionmaking has been part of the sociology literature for many years,

and it is slowly entering the management literature, through the analysis of operating

structures and organizational culture. The theories mentioned here on globalization

from below differ from the “think global, act local” philosophy from the transnational

corporations (TNCs), which has mainly meant to think global in production,

standardizing back-office procedures and operations, and thinking local in

commodifying the local culture by flavoring front office design and customer service

based on stereotypes and through marketing (see Farley & Lehmann, 2001).

Consultation of proposals, and ensuring these reflect local conditions is crucial to

globalization from below. Brander Brown & Harris report on the literature around

contingency theory, stating that there is no one management control that is suited to

all organizations and circumstances, and stating that “failure by management to

design control systems that are consistent with their organization’s culture may lead to

active resistance to the control system” (1997:107). This emphasizes the difficulty in

using externally generated systems to measure sustainability standards unless the

company or the certification scheme are committed to the issues.

Yet bottom-up decisionmaking to create a global agreement is politically complex,

and is likely to reach only vague agreements, or agree to disagree. In the case of the

STSC, vague agreements could be agreements in principle, but with no methods to

enforce them. Also the consultees could agree to disagree by simply saying that each

country and local conditions too different to make comparisons. There is a fine line

between forcing organizations to sign an externally generated agreement and allowing

a progress to be boycotted. In a meeting last November 2000 in Mohonk (New York),

a group of certification and sustainable tourism experts met and drafted principles to

certify sustainable tourism and ecotourism, which to date is the document that has

reached the largest consensus in the sector, if still small in relative terms. The

Mohonk Agreement (Honey & Rome, 2001) lists issues that a certification body

should address and require minimum standards. There are separate lists for

sustainable tourism and ecotourism, the latter being more stringent on requirements of

positive contribution to the destination and education of visitors. The list is quite

generic and many of the principles might be understood in a variety of ways and

therefore require further clarification, followed up with a round of discussions on

indicators to verify those principles.

Assuming that the consultees reach an agreement on the criteria that make a company

or product sustainable, and these can be applied across the board, the next step is to

agree on methods to verify these criteria. The difficulties are exacerbated when few of

the management control systems for the international hospitality industry (see Brander

Brown & Harris, 1997) are suitable to monitor environmental and social standards,

yet it is acknowledged that to keep the applicants’ costs to a minimum, certification

bodies should aim to verify environmental and social performance through evidence

that the company already collects for its own internal management purposes.

If the industry accepts a process of globalization from below that acknowledges local

differences, the next step is to consider how these local standards can be

communicated to a global market. An STSC global brand could operates as an

umbrella for locally-sensitive schemes, becoming a mechanism to eliminate some of

the drawbacks from risk perception when purchasing international products, and

tourists tend to rely on either familiar products or familiar distribution channels

(Usunier, 2000). If STSC is going to attract tourists to purchase accredited products, it

will have to broaden its selling proposition to other product attributes that contribute

to the decisionmaking process, and claim that accredited products are not only

sustainable, but they are, for example, reliable quality products in their entirety.

This will hit against a wide range of inherently different approaches to certification.

Ecotourism certification focuses on the ‘small is beautiful’ approach, on the searching

of closer contact with nature and one self’s origins. Certification of eco-savings

acknowledges the negative consumption pattern of society and attempts to make a

smaller negative footprint on the environmental resources available; although it

accepts the negative impact, this is not reversed, only reduced. The ultimate danger is

that by allowing too many local differences across certification bodies, this creates

consumer confusion. In the best of cases, creating a bottom-up global trademark based

on heterogeneity and diversity, rather than homogeneity and unity, will require funds

to be communicated and managed.

Challenges in setting global sustainability standards

The challenges in setting global sustainability standards can be summarized in three

themes. First, the fact that the priorities of the tourism industry in the North and South

Hemisphere countries differ, just as the economic, political, social and environmental

situations in these countries differ. Second, despite most efforts for a participative

process, some sectors of the tourist industry are less likely to be represented in the

discussions, and this is likely to affect the perceived legitimacy of the outcomes.

Third, despite the growing number of ecolabels in tourism, there are sectors of the

tourism industry and parts of the world where companies have no access to

certification, and even if they would want to enter the process, they currently cannot.

Also it is very unlikely that distribution channels in tourism can package holidays

where all the components are certified, which limits its potential as a selling

proposition.

North-South priorities differ

It has been argued that the sustainability is a Western, Northern debate imposed on

other parts of the world (Mowforth & Munt, 1998). Environmental protection and

social equity will not receive attention without economic stability (Paehlke, 2001).

STSC will have to seek a balance between the environmental concerns of the North

versus the developmental needs of the South. Southern hemisphere countries will find

themselves in a position where they will have to defend the economic viability of their

tourism industry above externally set environmental and social agendas. This is the

case in comparisons between continents, but also between countries within the same

continent, as long as there are considerable differences between the subjects

compared. In the debate over environmental standards for a single European ecolabel

for accommodation, Greece argued against what they considered overly high, since

their tourism industry would not be able to meet those standards, whereas Austria did

not want to lower the standards their industry had already achieved.

Therefore North-South differences are apparent not only in the performance in certain

standards, but on what issues are considered of importance. The Welfare states have

developed sustainability standards that mainly rely on environmental criteria and

standards linked to eco-efficiency. The majority of ecolabels in Europe do not

consider issues around the impact on the local residents and their culture, and they

mainly focus on environmental efficiency. This makes sense in the context of what

Beck (1992) argues has become a post-scarcity society, one where the basic needs are

covered and society is aware of the fact that “the sources of wealth are ‘polluted’ by

growing ‘hazardous effects’”(Beck, 1992:20, in Waters, 1995), although society relies

in a globalized economy to source unsustainable extraction of products away from the

more developed economies (see Helleiner, 2000; Clap, 2000).

The fact that environmental and social issues will not be considered for as long as

economic feasibility is under threat can be seen in the light of the current economic

and political uncertainty and the slowdown of the tourism industry arising from the

current war in Afghanistan, a time when most companies and governments will

concentrate their efforts in economic survival. This postpones the feasibility of talks

for governments to introduce funds to develop national environmental standards

within governmental quality standard agencies or independently run certification

bodies, and support mechanisms to encourage industry leaders to undergo first rounds

of certification and appear as cases of good practice.

The North-South difference is linked to company ownership, not location. The

increased adoption of “eco” promotions for what is in effect mass tourism is a

worryingly common characteristic of tourism TNC enclaves in developing countries

(Honey, 1999). This was a strongly felt issue arising from the preliminary results from

consultation workshop, Manaus (Brazil) in September 2001 was large companies,

mainly foreign, are perceived as having the means to justify their claims, even if the

locals do not agree. The perception was that if the tourism industry is seen to

implement some environmentally-friendly actions they are less likely to be targeted

for malpractice in other areas, such as economic leakages, anticompetitive practices

and support to local communities. Industries such as air transport have focused on fuel

efficiency as their environmental motto, yet the increase in flights causes a much

greater environmental impact than the cuts on impacts from eco-efficiency. The list of

green tricks used in the tourism industry is long (Honey, 1999), all of them arising

from the fact that these companies perceive more benefits from green marketing than

from sustainable management.

A final difference to be raised here in the North-South context is company size, and

the impact of job specialization, resources and knowledge to address external

certification. Besides foreign investment enclaves, a large number of firms owned by

locals in developing countries are small firms. There is an issue of equity here, since

small firms as certification applicants, and certification schemes in small countries,

will not have the systems in place that global standardization efforts require. In

developing accreditation criteria and procedures, it is necessary to take into account

the ‘smallness effect’ and not consider the inconsistency between the practice in these

countries and the imported models as a fault of the practice, but of the inadequacy of

the model (Baldacchino, 1997). It is imperative to be culture-sensitive, and not

become a new, more perverse method to enforce North-devised corporate

philosophies and work practices. Obviously there are also small companies in the

Northern Hemisphere, but in the governments in these countries have the means to

introduce incentives and training programs to raise awareness and capability within

small firms, as the European Union has done in the recent past through the LIFE

source of funds, the same source of funds currently contributing to Ecotrans’ VISIT

project to agree certification standards for tourism across a core group of ecolabels

(Ecotrans, 2001).

Participation and decisionmaking

The ability to participate in the decisionmaking process is crucial to ensure that the

final proposals represent the broad spectrum of the tourism industry. Local

communities must take part in defining what sustainable tourism means to them, and

in the same way tourism businesses must have a say in the processes that will

determine how they are assessed, specially when this is part of a voluntary initiative.

The key challenge for the STSC is to ensure that a wide range of organizations, even

those with little time and knowledge in the subject, can participate or be effectively

represented. The danger is to otherwise be considered an umbrella that legitimizes the

oligopolistic power of large-scale organizations.

STSC is only producing material in English. Although some of the workshop sessions

will allow more than working language (and the test workshop in Manaus, Brazil,

took place in Portuguese, Spanish and English), the promotional material, industry

updates, web page, invitations and other literature can only be produced in one

language for cost reasons. Language barriers are also cultural and educational

barriers; those people that speak good English to participate will have a good

educational background and are not likely to represent the local population.

There are also issues around which organizations will have the time to attend these

workshops. Comparisons between large chains and SMES show how the latter are in a

position of disadvantage: low productivity, poor product quality and a lack of access

to credit and training (ILO, 2001). Small firms will not have the knowledge, nor the

resources to participate in these discussions (Baldacchino, 1997). Attaching the STSC

consultation to major tourism trade events in a variety of countries increases the

catchment market, and Rainforest Alliance has secured some additional funds to

invite a core number of people from less advantaged backgrounds to the meetings.

But even in these favorable circumstances, the project management team has to

consider that smaller organizations might not have the resources to send a member of

staff to an international trade fair.

The process of ‘globalization from below’ can create tension and contradiction (Falk,

1999); this is very likely to occur in the case of developing the organizational

blueprint and accreditation criteria for STSC due to vested interests. At present most

certification schemes are operated either by governments (mainly in developed

countries) and NGOs (usually developed country’s NGOs operating in developing

ones); these two groups are likely to have different reactions to proposals of

accreditation. Industry has interests in the overall long term sustainability, but does

not want to be forced to take anti-economic decisions in the short term. The market

will not purchase what is perceived as a more expensive product unless the benefits

are clearly communicated. The authors consider here the likely reactions from these

groups below.

Setting environmental, social and cultural standards and regulations to balance simple

economic values on business decisions is one of the roles of state intervention in

tourism development (Brohman, 1996). Yet only some governments have introduced

programs of certification as a voluntary initiative tool, to generate interest and create

industry leaders. European Union states have traditionally considered environmental

education and intervention as one of their duties, whereas this is not the case in North

America (Paehlke, 2001). The consequence is that in Europe there are a myriad of

locally-generated initiatives to certify companies with reduced impacts, whereas there

are no significant government-induced actions in the US, and only some attempts in

Canada (Wight, 2001). The possibility of an international accreditation body might

change things, since a variety of governments that do not have a national system at

present might consider developing one. In the wake of proposals for an accreditation

system, Governments from Latin American countries without a current national

certification scheme would favor stepped standards, allowing companies to achieve a

bronze, silver or gold result, to ensure that there are more entry scales with receive

recognition for their achievement (de Bruyn, 2001). Governments are likely to use the

number of companies accredited as part of their promotional material and a source of

regional rivalry, in the way that the number of Blue Flag certified beaches has become

an issue for the Spanish, French, Italian and Greek governments in their quest to

position themselves as the supreme beach destination.

NGOs have used self-created certification systems to reward pilot projects for

conservation programs, but these are usually small scale and do not make a difference

to the market unless they take a product or destination cluster. The main interest from

NGOs revolves around ecotourism and fair trade tourism, rather than eco-efficiency.

These certification schemes will differ from the government-led ones in their scope,

scale, funding arrangements and overall aims, and will be harder to integrate to a

broader accreditation body due to their specificity.

The current style of globalization “may be relatively economically and politically

stable so long as the ever-more concentrated media view of the world remains

unchallenged- so long as ever-declining quality and environmental deterioration are

kept from the center of public view” (Paehlke, 2001:4). From this point of view,

visibility is an issue. Generating demand for products that meet sustainable standards

is linked to raising awareness. From the point of view of the market, ecolabels are

meaningless in the majority of cases, and tourists perceive that certified products are

more expensive (Lübbert, 2001). The most successful campaign is the Blue Flag,

since they have linked environmental quality with health and safety in a way that

tourists can see the benefits to themselves as individuals.

We suggest that there is a further challenge in satisfying demand for sustainably

produced products once this demand has been generated, but the industry is not in a

position to switch production mechanisms on time, as occurred in the forestry

industry with the demand by DIY outlets for certified timber after the WWF 1995

plus group process (Murphy & Bendell, 1997). The industry is therefore likely to

respond cautiously. Hotels are the key target, since their operations and impacts are

more defined and comparable to benchmarks. Hotels working towards certification

are generally doing it with eco-savings as the incentive, and they are a very small

proportion to the accommodation supply. Most companies are not prepared to face

pressures to meet assessment criteria and undergo external verification, and therefore

will not be willing to expose themselves to such pressures.

The second key target is the tour operating industry, since this has the power

associated with distribution channels both forward towards the client and backwards

towards the producer. There are very few certification schemes targeting tour

operators, because operators to date have claimed that they only package what is on

offer, but they have no means to influence providers. European tour operating chains,

under pressure to meet the EC’s 1992 Travel Package Regulations will benefit from

global standards, since the EC’s legislation places the responsibility in the tour

operator for the quality of the whole package, including health and safety, at the

destination’s hotel; yet the chances that there are local variations in the standards can

create confusion. Small ecotourism operators might see this as an opportunity to

validate their ecotourism claims, when their internal operations allow for the

assessment and verification requirements, and if there is a certification scheme

available in the region to assess them, since most countries with high ecotourism

potential are not covered by an ecolabel. The airline industry, possibly the largest

polluting sub-sector of the tourism industry and most certainly the most globalized

(Chan, 2000), is left outside the equation of certification.

Certification gaps and unlikely chains of custody

Certification bodies in tourism generally have fixed geographical boundaries, for a

variety of reasons but mainly two are presented here. First, efficiency: there are

increased costs from conducting assessments and verifications in remote places, and

added staff costs in terms of specialist knowledge. Also most systems in Europe are

funded by regional or national governments, and these operate within very confined

areas. Second, funding: governments and NGOs alike can only fund so many

applicants for certification schemes that in general require high involvement from the

certification body, and most schemes would not have the resources with a high

number of applicants. Tourism ecolabels are not evenly spread and the majority of

them target the hospitality industry. There are many places where no tourism

certification body is currently operating, and therefore tourism companies cannot get

certified; in turn the benefits from an accreditation body will not reach those

international tourists. Even worse, the lack of certification and accreditation in that

country will mean that if the STSC is successful in convincing target markets of their

selling proposition, companies with no access to certification (being geographical or

financial their reason) will find it increasingly difficult to promote themselves as

sustainable without external backing for their claims. This defeats the concept of

‘think globally, act locally’ itself, and is one of the key challenges of the project.

The fact that there are certification schemes targeting only some sub-sectors of the

tourism industry, and the lack of schemes in the majority of tourist destinations,

means that it is almost impossible for a tourist to purchase a holiday where their

transport, accommodation, entertainment (in the form of visits to national parks,

beaches, golf courses, or others) are all certified as having a minimum impact on the

environment, or an overall positive contribution. Even the certification schemes

targeting tour operators do not take into account chains of custody of certification,

which is key to certification and accreditation in other industries such as forestry

(Font, 2001). The concept of chains of custody means that the product that one

company will sell (i.e. a holiday package) can only be certified if its parts were

certified in the first place (and therefore the hotel, the transport, the tour guides, the

ground handling and so on need to be verified as meeting certain standards so the tour

operator’s package can meet theirs). The gaps in certification across countries,

coupled with the lack of products that can prove certification across the chain of

custody, means that for the STSC to be feasible a large part of its job will be to

encourage governments and NGOs alike to set up certification schemes that meet the

STSC requirements, and to gradually win over other schemes to conform to the STSC

as they review their assessment criteria and verification procedures.

Conclusions

For local sustainability efforts to make a meaningful difference to the global tourism

markets and distribution channels, these need to play the game of globalization from

below. The STSC aims to become one such method, by creating an umbrella that

ensures organizations and tourism products that are accredited meet certain standards

of sustainability. The alternative globalization from above process leads to fewer but

stronger labels through mergers and one by one agreements across labels to increase

market share, but ultimately leading to only the larger labels having the economies of

scale to make a difference in the global marketplace. Accreditation should bring a

comparable set of criteria for ecolabels, but these will have to be soft and allow for

site-specific conditions, and there is the danger that differences between accredited

products will be too large and this will create customer mistrust. The authors raise

here four issues that will be key to the feasibility of setting global sustainability

standards by the STSC.

First, the STSC needs to ensure it is an equitable instrument by ensuring that it gives a

fair opportunity to all tourism businesses to work towards it. It has been mentioned

that systems based programs are not suitable for small firms in tourism, and will put

small holdings in a position of competitive disadvantage if ecolabels take over since

this might add costs that make their businesses unfeasible. At the same time, it is

questionable whether it is equitable to disregard mass tourism organizations making

sizeable improvements towards being more sustainable, since these companies might

have inherited problems that they are finding solutions to, within their capabilities.

Second, the proposals for the STSC will be judged in their likelihood of being

effective, as a measure of how well this instrument achieves its objectives. Ecolabels

have generally first attracted applications from companies that already met the

standards, and only if the core group of these companies is large enough, they have

the power to change behavior in other companies. An accreditation body can increase

the interest from organizations to apply since it can give them a much greater

exposure; at the same time this depends on whether the STSC proposals are backed by

a core number of schemes.

Third, STSC has to prove it is making an efficient use of the resources available. If we

measure efficiency by the number of companies accredited, the low take up and high

start-up costs from governments and NGOs could indicate ecolabels are not an

efficient use of resources. Certification systems currently require external funding,

and all the systems targeting small firms require subsidizing. Accreditation will

become one more layer in verification, and it is suggested will require further funding

unless it also acts as a distribution channel and keeps a commission, which is unlikely

due to its nature. At the same time, there are no means to control green and quasi

green claims, and customers have limited information to discern between

greenwashes and sound products, and therefore the STSC can be seen as an efficient

use of resources to clamp down on greenwashing, even if that means that sustainable

companies do not have the means to have their good practice recognized.

Fourth, credibility and legitimacy will ultimately decide the STSC feasibility,

understood as to the extent up to which an instrument is accepted by its target

audiences as valid. From a global governance point of view, the fact that at present

tourism certification is resource-based and incentive-led, and not market-led, means

that it has had little impact. The confused message given to tourists (are we promoting

a clean, unspoilt destination or a sustainable place?) has limited its power. If this is

understood as market share, then ecolabels are not credible and legitimate, except in

cases such as the Blue Flag. These are key issues to gain credibility and legitimacy

from global tourism and distribution channels. From a local governance point of view,

ecotourism is generally not a standardized product where systems approaches work,

and the economies of scale make it impossible for small producers to apply. High

costs verification and the needs for expertise in implementation of the criteria,

specially when management systems and paper trails are required, are further

limitations. These are issues affecting credibility and legitimacy by applicants. This is

not an issue while tourism ecolabels do not have a significant weight in the consumer

choice process, but it might change in the future.

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Figure

Figure 1. The players in tourism ecolabels

TOURISM MARKET4. RECOGNITION5. ACCEPTANCE

Target from environmentally certified

tourism products, usually at a price premium

Promotes itself as recognized green tourism company

APPLICANT2. ASSESSMENT

3. CERTIFICATIONProvides evidence of environmental performance to allow verification

Checks environmental

performance of applicants against awarding criteria

Applies for recognition of environmental quality of their

performance

Promotes the award to applicants, co-ordinates the awarding process and PR activities

VERIFYING BODY

Promotes the award and the awardees to the

tourism market

Reports on performance and gives recommendations for awarding

Sets criteria to operationalize the

funding body’s aims

AWARDING BODY1. STANDARDS

Reports on results

Aims to influence environmental performance of the industry

FUNDING BODY

Source: Font, 2002