On the 27 and 28 March 2019, about ninety participants from the MED Sustainable Tourism Community, met in Split for workshop #2 of the MED Sustainable Tourism Community organised by the Adriatic Ionian Euroregion in the framework of BleuTourMed_C3 project. 

Divided into four thematic Working Groups, representatives of the 17 projects of the Community continued the work started in Marseille towards the Mediterranean Sustainable Tourism Convention 2019 to be held on June 5-7, 2019 in Barcelona. 

The MED Sustainable Tourism Community’s projects gathered in Split last March 27-28, 2019 to work together towards the drafting of the policy recommendations and continuing the work started in Marseille, last November 20-21, 2018.

Some AIE members (Puglia Region, Emilia Romagna Region, Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Split and Damatia County and Dubrovnik-Neretva Region) have attended the workshops as partners of MED modular project giving their contribution to the event.

Mr. Luka Brčić – Vice President of Split and Dalmatia County

The session has been opened by Mr. Luka Brčić, Vice President of Split and Dalmatia County, who welcomed the audience and stressed the importance of tourism in Croatia and in the Mediterranean region and strongly encouraged the actions implemented by the MED Sustainable Tourism Community. Then Mr. Francesco Cocco, Secretary General of Adriatic Ionian Region, took the floor to thank the community of projects for their participation and important contribution.

After the opening session, three projects which joined the community on February 2018 took the floor to introduce their main activities. Mrs. Konstantina Spyropoulou introduced the project INHERIT followed by Mr. Ernesto Lopez who presented the activities and the objectives of the project HERIT-DATA. The session was closed by Mrs. Antonija Odak who presented synergies and objectives of the COASTING, a capitalisation project based on the ICZM – Integrated Coastal and Maritime Management principles, aiming at enhancing the effectiveness of a multi-level governance tool.

Mrs. Lydwine La Fontaine, Project Officer Governance and Strategies of the Interreg MED Programme Joint Secretariat, presented the overall strategy of the Programme for the years to come and congratulated the members of the MED Sustainable Tourism Community for the results achieved and the synergies developed within the Community and amongst the different MED thematic communities in the last two years.

The proceedings continued with the “Worskshop #1: Shaping the Results of the Community”, facilitated by the Community Building team of the BleuTourMed project. The 17 territorial cooperation projects of the Community worked together on how to present their actions that  took place at Mediterranean level to the Community’s final conference, 5-6 June, Barcelona. They will also presented established synergies and the follow-up activities of their projects towards the end of the testing period and the beginning of the capitalization and transferring period.

The “Workshop #2: Finalising the Policy Factsheets”, facilitated by the Capitalisation team with the support of four external experts, has been oriented towards the finalisation of the “policy factsheets” of the four Working Groups focusing on the following identified sub-themes of the tourism complex matter:

#1 Monitoring Tourism Sustainability

#2 Tourism Multiple impacts: How to reduce the environmental-cultural- social impacts of tourism in the Mediterranean region?

#3 Tourism for sustainable and responsible growth: How can the tourism sector ensure a sustainable and responsible economic growth and prosperity in the Mediterranean region?

#4 Inclusive governance mechanism: How to address the complexity of the tourism sector, including local actors, decision-makers and consumers?

Modular projects representatives, external experts and policy-makers gathered in these working groups to finalise the policy factsheet, drafted during the capitalisation workshop in Marseille, 20-21 November 2018 and reviewed in two webinars. The Working Groups are now fine-tuning the Policy Factsheets, which will be presented at the Mediterranean Sustainable Tourism Convention 2019, 5-7 June, Barcelona.

Each Working Group, facilitated by the external expert and the partners of BleuTourMed, has worked to summarise the points arose during this long process in key messages to be addressed to the several targets and policy makers at local, regional, national and international level. In Barcelona, though, the final results of this long process will be shown.

The presentations of the workshop conclusions are available here

Here you will find a photogallery of the seminar.  

The news was originally published on MED Sustainable Tourism website https://sustainable-tourism.interreg-med.eu