European charter parks—A growing network for sustainable tourism development in protected areas

Abstract

Currently there are 107 protected areas in 13 European countries certified and working under the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas (ECST). Annually, some 10-15 new candidates strive for the Charter Award Certificate. The Charter methodology has been under continuous development since 2000 including definition of the criteria, harmonisation of the target and action standards, and giving more attention to the benefit opportunities and options of the Charter process. In this development process, the common framework has been the CBD sustainable tourism guidelines and their application in the European context. The other major focus has been in developing benefit indicators. This study analyses how the ECST criteria cover the basic CBD framework expressed in the CBD Aichi Targets, how successfully the sustainable development indicators have been developed, and how they can be used for verifying the system benefits. According to our analyses the ECST methodology strongly supports most of the Aichi Targets, out of 20 Targets, 11 directly and five indirectly. The analyses of key indicators for the social and economic benefits are based on case studies from the European Charter Network, especially in the Baltic Sea Region in Europe.