Tourism4SDG

Tourism4SDG – a project co-financed by the European Union in the framework of the Interreg Europe Programme 2021-2027 – is set to ensure that sustainable tourism is achieved by focusing on the improvement of tourism policy instruments (PI) in the scope of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations.

Policy instruments are still not able to fully align with the SDG at all levels of tourism governance, and sustainable tourism initiatives are not being measured in terms of sustainability results. A self-assessment and reflection are much needed to facilitate the identification of weaknesses of the current tourism policy instruments to identify lines of action for the future. The question is no longer “how to make tourism (more) sustainable?” but instead “to what extent tourism is in fact becoming more sustainable?”.

The project promotes a 4-year interregional learning process aiming at enhancing the efficacy of tourism policy instruments, answering to the challenge proposed by SDG 12.b: “to develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable development impacts for sustainable tourism”. Tourism4SDG will be focused on supporting the partners’ PI in achieving sustainability by improving their capacity to measure tourism sustainability, via the integration of monitoring methodologies, tools, and specific indicators. Through this collaborative learning process, the project seeks to ensure that strategic decisions regarding sustainable tourism are informed by valuable information and data, thereby fostering successful outcomes in sustainability for participating regions.

Additionally, through the territorial transnational cooperation, with a partnership covering 10 different European countries (8 EU members project partners + 2 discovery partners) that act at different governance levels (local, regional and national), it will also allow to produce comparable data on the monitoring of the sustainability of tourism.

Tourism4SDG partners:

• Coimbra Region Intermunicipal Community (Lead Partner) | Portugal
• Asociación Ibérica de Municipios Ribereños del Duero (AIMRD) | Spain
• Lubelskie Voivodeship | Poland 
• Nyíregyháza Municipality | Hungary 
• Visit Zuid-Limburg | Netherlands
• Communauté d'Agglomération de LaRochelle | France
• Ministry of Economics of the Republic of Latvia | Latvia
• Tartu County Tourism Foundation | Estonia 
• Regional Council Durres | Albania
• Municipality of Sokobanja | Serbia