Tourists will soon have a trustworthy and independent resource to evaluate whether a hotel, lodge or other tourism business' claim of sustainability is truly reliable. In April, at a meeting in Paris attended by representatives from 40 organizations -- including the United Nations Foundation (UNF), the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Tourism Organization and The International Ecotourism Society -- the launch of the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council (STSC) was officially set in early 2009.

Meeting, participants agreed to adopt a temporary organizational structure for the STSC that includes an interim board with representation from 15 different stakeholders and regions, which will be selected in June 2008 and will guide the creation process until January 2009. The UNF has committed partial financial support for this next phase.

Several organizations also expressed interest in forming an STSC-United Nations partnership, which would allow the council to draw support from United Nation agencies whose work is relevant to tourism.

When it's time to plan their next vacation, a growing number of travelers are sitting down at their computers and making their reservations with a click of a mouse. So it should come as no surprise that the Rainforest is focusing on the Internet as a means of more efficiently supporting companies that participate in our best practices program or have been certified by members of the Sustainable Tourism Certification Network of the Americas.

The Rainforest Alliance is urging online travel companies to establish Web pages that provide advice on responsible tourism and to promote to their clients hotels, lodges and other businesses that have begun to adopt sustainable practices.

"We've begun contacting Internet travel agencies, such as Expedia and Travelocity, which are visited by 45 million people each month," explains Cristina Suhr, marketing specialist with the Rainforest Alliance's sustainable tourism program. "By establishing working relationships with these companies, we can take the message of sustainability to greater numbers of tourists than ever."

Two years ago, the United Nations Environment Programme, with funding from the Global Environment Facility, entrusted the Rainforest Alliance and Conservation Internacional, to promote biodiversity conservation in the tourism industries of Ecuador and Belize.

To that end, we joined the Program for Belize and the Ecuadorian Ecotourism Association to train business owners in the two countries. We also developed four manuals of best practices for sustainable tourism, two for marine-coastal ecosystems and two for tropical forests -- because the more business owners know about their environments, the easier it is for them to decrease the negative impacts of their operations.

When we began the project, the average general compliance with sustainability indicators relating to biodiversity protection was just 59 percent in Ecuador and 65 percent in Belize. Rather than being discouraged by those numbers, we took them as a challenge. We organized training workshops that led to 45 tourism enterprises participating in our best practices program, and provided the businesses with technical assistance to help them improve their operations.

The effort was worthwhile. A survey completed at the end of the project found that compliance in Ecuador had increased to 73.5 percent, and in Belize, to 76 percent. Such numbers make us feel that we've done a good job -- and that together with the business owners and tourists, we've contributed to biodiversity conservation in both countries.

With seven million visitors reported for 2007, Mexico's state of Quintana Roo is "the" Latin American tourism destination. But those impressive numbers have made it urgently important for the region to adopt conservation measures.

Drawing on the Rainforest Alliance's expertise and with the support of the UK government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Mexico's Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, (Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources) has launched a project to address this issue.

Since the launch of the initiative, 18 consultants have received training and are now providing tourism businesses with the information they need to operate sustainably.  So far, companies in Quintana Roo have enrolled in the Rainforest Alliance's best practices program and are beginning to improve their performance vis-a-vis waste management, energy conservation, environmental education and community relations. In the future, we'll be helping those businesses consider the option of certification, and assisting them with marketing activities.

In May, the Rainforest Alliance presented one award and received another in recognition of commitments to build a more sustainable tourism industry.

The Costa Rican Association of Tourism Professionals honored us as a "Friend of Nature EXPOTUR 2008" -- an award given to organizations and individuals who contribute to Costa Rica's tourism development. "The award demonstrates that the work we're doing has helped hundreds of tourism companies in Latin America transform their business practices and the behavior of tourists, in order to decrease negative impacts and increase support for biodiversity conservation and local culture," said Ronald Sanabria, director of the Rainforest Alliance's sustainable tourism program.

That same month, the Rainforest Alliance honored the Costa Rican airline Nature Air as a "Corporate Sustainable Standard Setter" at our annual gala in New York City. At our annual gala, the Rainforest Alliance recognizes companies around the world for their efforts to make their businesses sustainable and support conservation. Nature Air has been carbon-neutral since 2006, when the airline offset its emission of 4,650 tons of carbon (the waste product of 470,000 gallons of fuel) the previous year by supporting the conservation of almost 500 acres (200 hectares) of forest on the Osa Peninsula, on Costa Rica's southern Pacific coast.

Small and medium tourism businesses in Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Perú that are committed to sustainability have a new ally: the Citi Foundation, which recently contributed $200,000 to the Rainforest Alliance.

The donation will allow us to train more than 300 business owners in the adoption of best practices for sustainable tourism, and to undertake diagnostic studies of 80 tourism businesses in order to evaluate their situations and identify steps they can take to make their operations more sustainable.

The funds will also be used for the Rainforest Alliance's work to promote sustainable forestry and reduce deforestation-related carbon emissions.

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The Rainforest Alliance's work in sustainable tourism in Latin America is supported by: The Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank, the United States Agency for International Development, the Overbrook Foundation, The Global Environment Facility/United Nations Environment Programme, the Mitsubishi Foundation, the Citigroup Foundation and others.

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