The Central Coast and Coffs Coast have both scored spots on the Global Green Destinations Top 100 List for 2022.
Every year international sustainable tourism organisation Green Destinations collects entries worldwide sharing and promoting stories that recount innovative and effective initiatives and projects from destinations working towards more sustainable development globally.
The Central Coast was recognised for its story People Power: Rebuilding a region with ECO at heart, shared its goal to fulfil a two-year ‘ECO journey’, unearthing a range of hidden stories and green-hearted businesses across the region, including the sustainable world of oyster farming, launching recyclable cup systems across 30 cafés, installing accessible beach matting in summer, rewilding farmland for native bird species and much more.
The destination’s story shares with the world how it’s the small, people-powered gestures that make up one big movement toward creating a more sustainable destination.
Coffs Coast story entry, Two Path Strong, celebrated Aboriginal tourism on the Coffs Coast and the rich culture that has supported the establishment of the first bilingual Indigenous language school in New South Wales, Australia.
Known as the ‘sharing people’, the Gumbaynggirr people are widely celebrated for giving their abundant food, waterways and knowledge to others, so it’s fitting that they received international recognition for their success in sustainable tourism and Indigenous education.
Brisbane Water National Park NSW Central Coast
Now in its 8th year, the Global Green Destinations Top 100 List acts as a showcase of inspiring ‘good practice’ stories from destinations around the world to be shared amongst destination managers, tour operators and visitors to facilitate knowledge sharing in the tourism industry.
“By telling their stories, destination management organisations can be acknowledged and recognised for the solutions they have implemented in response to their challenges and problems,” Green Destinations said in a statement.
“With the tourism sector facing very challenging times in the past years, these destinations’ resiliency and hard work to become more responsible should be celebrated.”
However, the Top 100 Committee, chaired by Albert Salman, president of Green Destinations, has stressed that selecting the Top 100 list does not mean the destination is sustainable.
Rather, the selection acknowledges that the destination has been pre-selected based on a minimum level of compliance with the core criteria of the Green Destinations Standard and selected to the list based on the assessment of their Good Practice Story.
All selected destinations were also been evaluated on the Green Destinations Core Criteria, from the Green Destinations Standard – recognised by the GSTC, identified as the basics of sustainability performance.
Submissions were evaluated by the Top 100 evaluator team, country experts and Green Destinations partners, coordinated by Green Destinations. Criteria such as the quality, transferability, level of innovation in the stories and presence of all sustainability pillars were considered in the selection.
The competition is held under the auspices of the Top 100 Partnership, supported by the Future of Tourism Coalition, with special contributions by: Green Destinations, QualityCoast, Travelife, ITB Berlin, Asian Ecotourism Network, Ecotourism Australia, Global Ecotourism Network, Sustainable First.
Featured image: Giingan Gumbaynggirr Cultural Experience
