How Costa Rica has set Pace in Sustainable Tourism

By Mary Mwendwa

Recently, Kenya Tourism Board (KTB ) held a high level annual event  for the tourism sector – The Magical Kenya Travel Expo (MKTE ) that brought together   travel agents, tour operators and hoteliers in a central place to conduct tourism business and create  unique opportunities for the tourism business operators.

At the event was  Glen Jampol an expert and  business person in tourism sector  from Costa Rica. Costa Rica is known for its progressive environmental policies, being the only country to meet all five UNDP criteria established to measure environmental sustainability.

Mary Mwendwa  interviewed him on the Sustainable Tourism agenda.

What kind of business do you do in Costa Rica

Iam the  founder of a small boutique hotel in Costa Rica called Finca Rosa Blanca Coffee Plantation Resort,  we also operate a small shade grown organic coffee plantation. I am also very involved with ecotourism and sustainable tourism in Costa Rica, a country that the world leader and recognized pioneer in what is currently labeled “sustainable tourism”

How do you rate sustainable tourism in Costa Rica compared to the rest of the world

Sustainable tourism in Costa Rica is recognized globally as being the leader in sustainable tourism practices not only because of its past history with environmental protection among small and medium-sized businesses, but also because our certification program, called the Certification For Sustainable Tourism or CST, which covers not just environmental protection, but also socioeconomic involvement with communities, training and education and service to the client.

 What do you understand by sustainable tourism and how important it is in tourism  sector

For me, sustainable tourism is really responsible and symbiotic tourism with an additional focus on financially sustaining the business. We consider that any good business with good practices, a policy of responsibility and using a high level of ethical standards, cannot continue in its important work unless it is assured of a positive bottom line, or net profits. Regarding the tourism sector, I consider mass tourism as being one of the most imposing impediments for the healthy evolution of tourism. What I think sustainable tourism tries to do at its core, and very generally speaking, is to ensure that following generations of tourism business owners and travelers will be able to experience authentic and considered experiences through businesses that reduce its footprint in every way possible; whether it be its carbon footprint, its waste footprint, its consumption footprint and to minimize all of its negative impact, which will ultimately lend itself to the improvement and education of the local communities and people where it resides. This is augmented by a strong philosophy and policy of training and education, and a cultural understanding that would allow the business to openly integrate with the community and its inhabitants and which would include, of course, the hiring of local people as employees.

You own a hotel in Costa Rica how have you demonstrated sustainable practices

Our sustainable practices began over 30 years ago with ideas and considerations about minimizing the use of non-biodegradable materials, learning to recycle our waste products whenever possible including our organic waste products into compost, and a strong desire to minimize any impact we would have caused environmentally, culturally or physically. Over the last several decades we have learned a lot not only from our peer group and colleagues, but also from our visitors and our own business experiences. As a result, we look for solutions that would not only allow us to further reduce our impact, but also to increase our income so that we can depend on net profits allowing us to further integrate and include the standards of good business practices -responsible and ethical standards- into our daily lives, and to share this with our employees and guests. We basically see sustainability in four tangible areas; environmental protection and conservation, socioeconomic participation in the community, training and education for our employees and our guests, and a high quality informative and interpretive service for our clients.

You attended a recent Kenya Magical Expo in kenya as one of the speakers,what insights did you share and what were your experiences during that time

I was very fortunate to be invited by the Kenyan Tourism Board to participate in the Magical Kenya Expo, which ran seminars about sustainable tourism concurrent with the other tourism activities: geo-parks, marketing responsibly and several other topics that were extremely interesting. I was able to share my experiences in Costa Rica, as a Costa Rican citizen and as the chair of the Global Ecotourism Network, an organization consisting of very experienced ecotourism and sustainable tourism practitioners who together have more than 200 years of experience in responsible tourism and ecotourism.

For me, Kenya is the birthplace of ecotourism, or sometimes called nature based tourism, and was an extreme honor and pleasure to be able to share information on how ecotourism has evolved as a business, along with the need to act responsibly while sustaining a financial positive bottom line coupled with the desire to reduce the negative impact from all its business activities. It was a great pleasure to meet all of the interested people from Kenya and other parts of Africa who are adamant in their desire to change the consumptive consciousness of traditional tourism and mass tourism into a kind of symbiotic and responsible business practice which would be able to sustain the niche of tourism that is currently found in Kenya, while improving its ability to reduce waste, its carbon footprint, and to develop this ethos and responsibility in the younger generation who will take the reins from us in the future.

How do you rate Kenya in terms of sustainable tourism and what are the gaps you have seen and how can they be solved

In terms of sustainable tourism, I think Kenya has been very interested for quite a long time in trying to reduce its footprint and to increase the educational properties of the kind of Safari tourism that is currently offered, but still has many challenges to confront regarding issues of plastic, waste management, interpretive guiding, and education and training not only to the guests but to their staff as well. What I think may be needed, is to increase the education and training of all of the players involved in developing the strategic and action plans for the future of Kenyan tourism so that the authentic experience and intriguing nature based tourism will continue without becoming overly saturated and stressing the infrastructure of its desire to develop. In my experience, the Kenyan people are extremely integrated into the culture of tourism, and have a very strong and positive attribute which they can use alongside their attempt at increasing their sustainability efforts: they are the super warm and authentically nice people.

You were a board member of The International Ecotourism Society (TIES),  what led to the resignation of other members and how did this affect TIES operations, you now chair,Global Ecotourism Network ( GEN ),tell us more about GEN and what it aims to achieve

I was a board member of TIES since 2004, and was a vehement and committed participant in all of the events, activities and educational conferences that we created from our organization. I relished and cherished the idea of having a voice in an international organization that could affect positively so many people and offer experiential and data-driven educational tools so that developing nations and mass tourism destinations could change their attitude and become more responsible and sustain the positive aspects of their tourism industry. An international global organization is essential in order to link together all of the regions of the world who in one form or another are trying to rebuild the idea of tourism for the future and we think that ecotourism and sustainable tourism are the best bet for the following generations.

Unfortunately, after many years of trying to financially understand and manage TIES, all of the advisory board were left with no other option than to resign.

We were very concerned about the lack of financial information that would allow us to analyze -and if necessary correct- the unsuccessful financial path that we had been taking  and to rectify the way in which we managed the funds of the organization.

We took very seriously our commitment to manage this global ecotourism organization ethically and responsibly for all of the members -paid or otherwise- and in 2015 despite our numerous requests without success, felt that there was no longer enough information given to us to allow us to ethically continue as board members. As a result the entire advisory board of TIES resigned and we formed a new organization that would be the new umbrella organization for ecotourism societies and associations and we would act as a consultation bank, a think tank, and a catalyst for the growth and discussion of ecotourism and sustainable tourism throughout the world.

This organization, the Global Ecotourism Network GEN, is now very involved globally in helping organizations, countries, and regional associations to become familiar with each other, to learn and understand proven methodologies for reducing our impact globally in tourism, and to create a global conversation among all of these players so that we can enhance and the development of a new age in tourism.

You have won awards in sustainability practices tell us more 

We have won many awards for our work in sustainability and in particular we have achieved a level of five out of five possible  levels in the Certification For Sustainable Tourism (CST), for over 12 years. However, what is most important has been as a small hotel employing hundreds of people over the last two decades the ability to sustain and grow financially as well as ethically over the last 27 years, and  to act as a dissemination tool for alternatives for business practices rather than implement the traditional tourism model. Furthermore as a coffee farmer who produces 7,000 to 10,000 kg of shade grown organic coffee every year, we have been awarded several accolades and awards based on our sustainable practices. In 2010, we received the Rainforest Alliance’s “Sustainable Standard Setters” award, which was extremely important because we were a small farm competing against major companies throughout the world. This could only have been achieved based on the implementation of all of the best practices and experiential lessons learned over the past 30 years.

Any parting shot 

Hopefully, all of the readers of these kinds of reports and articles who really want to participate in the conversation with other interested people and organizations in the world of tourism, would communicate with us and stay in touch with the Global Ecotourism Network so that we can accumulate and share members and allies in this great challenge to change conceptually and literally the way in which tourism will be treated in the next hundred years.