Las Galeras-Samaná, Dominican Republic, November 8, 2018: With the goal of becoming a sustainable tourism destination with biodiversity indicators, the District Board of Las Galeras, in conjunction with the German Development Cooperation, GIZ; the Ministries of Environment and Tourism, the tourism sector and the community, began a way to become certified as the first sustainable and biodiversity destination in the world, by the international certifier TourCert.
"From the District Board Las Galeras we recognize the importance and benefits that sustainable tourism and the incorporation of biodiversity criteria can provide to the Municipal District, so we seek to facilitate this process towards certification," said Cecilio Garcia Javier, director of the District Board Las Galeras.
Las Galeras has created a Sustainability Council made up of different business sectors, as a base structure to manage, promote and monitor actions related to certification. In addition, the analysis of work with 20 companies in the destination has begun to analyze their relationship with sustainability and biodiversity, through checklists. As a result of this analysis, the participating companies must create a management improvement plan to be accredited as companies associated with the destination at the end of this process, which is expected to last 12 months.
"We have found in Las Galeras, a municipality with a work structure and a large amount of natural resources that has the possibility of positioning itself and managing a tourist destination in a sustainable manner, integrating the biodiversity of the site as an added value," explained Svenja Paulino, director of the Biodiversity and Business Program in Central America and the Dominican Republic, of the GIZ.
Also, to operationalize this process, the District Board of Las Galeras, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the GIZ, the company TourCert and the Sustainability Council, which seeks to join efforts to develop joint actions to raise awareness and involvement of companies in Las Galeras, in order to improve the supply of tourism sector, focused on sustainable tourism with biodiversity protection.
This certification arises as a pilot process of the GIZ and TourCert after an alliance established between both parties, in which biodiversity indicators are incorporated with the technical support of the Global Nature Fund (German NGO specialized in biodiversity) to grant the seal and thus offer the tourism sector tools that favor the protection and conservation of biodiversity involving the participation of various actors.
This process is developed within the framework of the project "Biodiversity and Business in Central America and the Dominican Republic: Contribution of the tourism sector for the restoration and protection of marine and coastal biological diversity in the Caribbean Sea", developed by the European Union and the GIZ, the latter on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).