After three decades, Ecotourism Australia keeps reinventing itself to be relevant to the changing needs of the ecotourism industry. Chairperson Claire Ellis spoke to Mallika Naguran on why Australia’s new sustainable destination certification is very much needed and on working with WWF to advance the interests of Australian ecotourism operators while rebuilding disaster affected areas.
Hobart, 25 August 2020. Dr. Claire Ellis once had her own tour operations at sea. She ran small expeditions using charter vessels within sunny Indonesia in the 1990s. Little did she know that years later, she’d be Chair of an organisation that oversees ecotourism standards in Australia particularly in enhancing sustainability in nature-based areas.
Ecotourism Australia is focused on inspiring environmentally sustainable and culturally responsible tourism. The not-for-profit organisation delivers certification programmes for nature-based tourism products and creates networking and learning opportunities for its members.
Dr. Claire Ellis: Sustainability in tourism should not stop with resorts and tours, but rather cover the entire area in which they operate.
Ellis has been the chairperson of Ecotourism Australia for two years now and the excitement of making things happen was evident when she spoke to Gaia Discovery. “We've been operating for almost 30 years and we were the first organisation in the world to develop an ecotourism certification programme for tourism products. We have operators who've been certified with us more than 20 years now. A fantastic achievement! And we have a long heritage and history in the delivery and management of quality certification programmes that meet the needs of our members and industry.”
Currently, around 1700 products from all over Australia are certified with Ecotourism Australia. Around 45% of operators have been certified members for at least 10 years and 35% for more than 20 years.
“When stakeholders are all working around developing a better destination both for visitors and also for the communities that live there, it helps our members by providing a better operating environment—a better place to work.”
Australia’s own sustainable destination certification
Ellis, formerly a Tourism Tasmania director and a board member of the Asian Ecotourism Network, has seen progress take place within Ecotourism Australia in terms of growth and expansion of services, particularly with the introduction of ECO Destination Certification. This uses a framework that’s accredited by the international Global Sustainable Tourism Council. “What's really exciting to me in the last three years or so is we've increasingly looked at improvement, and we've linked up with a number of different entities and organisations around global systems.” Rather than reinventing the wheel, Ecotourism Australia chose to adapt a system originally developed in Europe—the Green Destinations Standard for Sustainable Tourism—adding additional criteria to make it ecotourism specific and amending it to fit the Australian context.
Dr. Claire Ellis (left) presents Julia Leu, mayor of Douglas Shire, an ECO Destination certification in 2019. Photo: Ecotourism Australia
The introduction of destination level certification, aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, complements operator-level tourism certifications in sustainability. Ellis told me why the new destination certification is important. “When our visitors arrive, they travel around and do different things—such as walking on the beach or in a national park. And so how the whole place works is critical, not just how a single operator works.”
For instance, an operator striving to improve sustainability can benefit when the wider area is improving—recycling is one obvious example. “When stakeholders are all working around developing a better destination both for visitors and also for the communities that live there, it helps our members by providing a better operating environment—a better place to work,” she said. “So that’s been a really exciting change that Ecotourism Australia has stepped into and is now seeing take-off across Australia; we now have 13 destinations that are fully signed up (the first of which achieved certification last year) and quite a few more in the pipeline, which is brilliant.”
There are three levels of certification—Nature Destination certification, Ecotourism Destination certification and Green Destinations Certified (Ecotourism). Thus, a tourism destination with a strong, dedicated ecotourism focus that also meets all of the international GSTC-recognised Green Destinations Standard will receive the ultimate certified and accredited level by Ecotourism Australia.
Ecotourism Australia’s expertise came in valuable for Vanuatu in establishing tourism standards & action plan in 2016. Photo: Ecotourism Australia
How the WWF-Australia Partnership Began
In March this year, Ecotourism Australia formed a partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia (WWF-Australia) to strengthen aid and capacity building to destinations affected by the horrific bushfires in Australia during the summer season of 2019-20. Ellis described the new relationship as an outcome of Ecotourism Australia’s strong philosophy in knowing what they do best while partnering with others for areas of expertise to extend and grow joint capacity.
“What we're looking at is considering and extending how we grow and support the nature-based tourism industry here in Australia and the quality and range of outcomes it can deliver. The partnership with WWF-Australia came about because, like a number of conservation organisations, WWF raised significant funds for the bushfire recovery process and were examining, ‘how best can we spend these funds to help regional Australia?’. While WWF already were able to undertake many environmentally-based projects, they came to Ecotourism Australia noting, ‘you have members all across Australia and you have a lot of members in fire-affected areas’. We also had programmes such as the ECO Destination Certification plus the capacity to help operators to tell the story of fires and regeneration in a positive and contemporary way, helping them re-build their businesses into the future,” said Ellis.
Bushfire recovery efforts have been given a boost with Ecotourism Australia’s partnership with nature and conservation NGO WWF-Australia. Photo: Adam Stevenson/WWF
With funding of AUD250,000, Ecotourism Australia has been working across a range of fire impacted areas across Australia to provide tools that will not just help operators through the recovery period now but will actually make them more resilient and stronger. “As we all know, fires will come again or it'll be a flood or a cyclone or something else. And it's how we improve our capacity to manage these that is going to be critical for Australia, and many other parts of the world,” Ellis explained.
Would certification be needed though? “I think certification has a couple of real values from the way I look at it. One is, because quite honestly, it helps a manager, whether it's at a business or destination level. It provides a framework to make sure that you haven't missed gaps and pieces. Managers can quickly scan and go ‘we're pretty good across 70% of the areas, but, thinking about that other 30%, I can see some things we could do better’.”
More generally certification in a range of industry sectors, according to Ellis, gives greater validity and integrity for certified operators, creating trust within consumers. She added, “There's many standards, and certification systems across all types of industry sectors. One reason is that there are things that a consumer/visitor won't necessarily see or understand, ‘the back of house’, but we want to have the assurance that those things are done, and done to a reasonable standard. And so certification really helps provide that certainty.”
Dr. Claire Ellis enjoys fresh, clean air and nature. She’s at Bare Hill, Schouten Island, looking towards Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania.
The bar set by Ecotourism Australia is reasonably high; members spend a lot of time and effort working to achieve ECO certification, and thereafter, to improve. This is well worth the effort, according to Ellis. “It has helped our members thrive and the annual turnover of members is well over AUD1 billion. With the increasing focus on overtourism and climate change, sustainability is growing in importance. For people in another part of the world or another part of Australia, it can give them the assurance to know that where they are visiting has the approach and value set that they are seeking. Our visitors are increasingly caring about where they spend their money and time.”
Ellis, when not out bushwalking, runs her own consultancy out of Hobart, Tasmania. She will be sharing her insights at Ecotourism Australia’s annual Global Eco Asia Pacific Tourism Conference from 1-3 December 2020.