Five parks in the region received the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism

Representative of Gornje Podunavlje SNR with deserved certificate 

The directors of Una National Park (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Lonjsko Polje and Medvednica Nature Parks (Croatia), Fruška Gora National Park and Gornje Podunavlje Special Nature Reserve (Serbia) received an important acknowledgement in the European Parliament in Brussels on December 11, 2014. They will enter the New Year 2015 as the first parks in the region with the prestigious acknowledgement – the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism.

The process of preparation of the parks for this acknowledgement started two years ago when they entered the Europarc Federation via the WWF Dinaric Arc Parks project. The parks established forums of the stakeholders which had a couple of meetings and created their strategies on sustainable tourism – promotion and communication strategies are among them. After they delivered their nominations in February this year, their strategies were reviewed by a team of verificators that later visited the parks and talked with the stakeholders and got familiar with management, business and offer of the parks.

The main goal of the Ceritficate is to improve the quality of services in the parks with an aim of nature protection. Sustainable tourism complies the needs of the present-day tourists and hosts, but it also protects and improves future opportunities. It is the way of management of all the resources in the way that it satisfies economic, social and aesthetic needs of tourists and at the same time keeps cultural identity, important environmental processes and biodiversity.

WWF will try to support these parks in the future to conduct all the activities planned through their strategies on sustainable tourism and to encourage them to get better than they are. They have received the Cerificate in the five-year period and the verification process will be conducted again after that.

Among the parks that are members of the association 'Parks Dinarides – network of the protected areas of Dinarides' there are a couple of parks that want to give over the nominations for this certificate. They are headed by Kornati National Park from Croatia and Biogradska Gora National Park from Montenegro.

Petra Boić Petrač, WWF