MED Sustainable Tourism community

Tourism sector is amongst the highest income generators in the Mediterranean. Leisure related activities make tourism a leading economic sector in terms of gross value added and employment. Tourism contributes directly to regional economies with sectoral synergies and strong multiplying effects.

Despite its economic and social importance, tourism development is exerting undue pressures on natural and built environment. These pressures may threaten the quality of life of local populations, degrade the tourism assets and, by consequence, affect negatively future tourism developments. Exploiting the full potential of tourism requires an innovative approach and sustainable basis. Therefore, effective strategies and targeted integrated actions should be developed and implemented across the Mediterranean region.

Created in November 2016 within the framework of the Interreg MED Programme under the name of BleuTourMed, the MED Sustainable Tourism Community has been renewed for a three-year period until June 2022 to make tourism a real driver for inclusive and sustainable growth.

Since 2019, five new territorial cooperation projects (LABELSCAPE SuSTowns, WINTER MED, INCIRCLE and DESTIMED PLUS) have joined the Community that now gathers 22 projects co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), almost 300 organisations (public authorities, private companies, universities, NGOs and international organisations) active in 12 European-Mediterranean coastal areas. Besides, two Strategic Projects, approved in October 2019, focusing on governance of sustainable tourism will join forces with the Community.

Most notably, the Community’s members are leading the development of innovative tools to monitor the tourism industry, they are studying and testing new tourism models and they are actively engaging policy makers and managers in a constant dialogue to make tourism a real driver for inclusive and sustainable development.

Plan Bleu is partner of the MED Sustainable Tourism Community, French territorial antennaand Horizontal Angel of 5 projects: DestiMED, DESTIMED PLUS, Coasting, Co-Evolve and Alter Eco.

Main goals:

1.     Enhancing attractiveness and tourism offer: Alternatives to mass tourism (sun and beach) taking benefit of local/regional resources: underwater heritage, culinary heritage, ecotourism in protected areas, mountains, fishing tourism, cycling tourism…

2.     Addressing tourism pressures: Reducing the impact of tourism activities (water consumption, waste generation, management of tourists flows, carrying capacity) & circular economy

3.     Strengthening planning and management practices: Measuring the sustainability and development of indicators and tools for planning. Integrated planning and management of tourism flows.

Through the Sustainable Tourism Community’s foreseen transferring processes, the community aims to replicate its most tangible outputs in other areas of the Mediterranean and achieve the maximum visibility and implementation with:

• Cooperation: Representatives of the public and private sector willing to exchange their existing management strategies based on other experiences.
• Turn methods into sustainable demonstrative actions.
• Networking
• Multiplier effect: Territories adopting models and investing resources and initiatives.
• Pool of monitoring practices: A series of indicators developed in order to measure tourism sustainability.

Key publications:

• The Sustainable tourism Catalogue of projects outputs and policy targets: This catalogue presents the most important outputs of the projects implemented within the Sustainable Tourism Community (STC) of the INTERREG MED 2014-2020 programme. The selection of outputs was made on the basis of better promoting common integrated actions that could boost the sustainable and responsible development of coastal and maritime tourism in the Mediterranean region.
• Thematic Papers analysing the main features of the Community
• Thematic Reviews collecting news and events on the topics of our working groups
• Thematic Factsheets introducing how the Community is tackling sustainable tourism strategic issues
• Policy Factsheets produced by the working groups
• Policy Recommendations summarising how policies should change to really support sustainable tourism development
• Athens Declaration for sustainable tourism, the community’s manifesto on tourism as a driver for inclusive and sustainable development
• Scientific Publications based on the results of the Community published on international academic journals

Projects of the Community:

• ALTER ECO: Alternative tourist strategies to enhance the local sustainable development of tourism by promoting Mediterranean Identity.
• BLUEISLANDS: Seasonal variation of waste as effect of tourism.
• BLUEMED: Plan/test/coordinate Underwater Museums, Diving Parks and Knowledge Awareness Centres in order to support sustainable and responsible tourism development and promote Blue growth in coastal areas and islands of the Mediterranean.
• CASTWATER: Coastal areas sustainable tourism water management in the Mediterranean.
• COASTING: Defining a common methodology for integrated coastal tourism using ICZM, coastal contracts and bay contracts.
• CO-EVOLVE: Promoting the co-evolution of human activities and natural systems for the development of sustainable coastal and maritime tourism.
• CONSUME-LESS: Consume Less in Mediterranean Touristic Communities.
• DestiMED: Mediterranean Ecotourism Destination: main components (joint planning, monitoring, management and promotion) for a governance system in Mediterranean protected areas.
• EMbleMatiC: Emblematic Mediterranean Mountains as Coastal destinations of excellence.
• HERIT DATA: Sustainable Heritage Management towards Mass Tourism Impact thanks to a holistic use of Big and Open Data
• INHERIT: Natural heritage tourism for the Mediterranean coastal and maritime areas.
• MEDCYCLETOUR: MEDiterranean CYcle route for sustainable coastal
  TOURism.
• MEDFEST: MED Culinary heritage experiences: how to create sustainable tourist destinations.
• MITOMED+: Models of Integrated Tourism in the MEDiterranean.
• ShapeTourism: New shape and drives for the tourism sector: supporting decision, integrating plans and ensuring sustainability.
• SIROCCO: Sustainable InterRegional cOastal & Cruise maritime tourism through Cooperation and joint planning
• TOURISMED: Tourism fisheries towards a sustainable development in the Mediterranean Region.
• LABELSCAPE : Integration of sustainability labels into Mediterranean tourism policies
• SuSTowns : enhancing SUStainable tourism attraction in small fascinating med TOWNS
• WINTER MED : Winter Islands Network for all year round Tourism ExpeRience in the MEDiterranean

• INCIRCLE : Support INsular and low density areas in the transition towards a more CIRCuLar tourism Economy

• DESTIMED PLUS : Ecotourism in Mediterranean Destinations: From Monitoring and Planning to Promotion and Policy Support