engleski

Managing Environmental Footprint of Short Food Supply Chain Components

Local food is an essential part of the tourism experience and for many travelers’ primary reason to travel. It symbolizes tourism destinations and vividly demonstrate local traditional culture and identity. Such food is locally produced and promotes short (local) food supply chains which generate economic, social, environment and health benefits not only for the local community but also for the tourists. Therefore, the short (local) food supply chain nowadays is an important way to gain a best practice for the sustainable management and promotion of destination. Unfortunately, many destinations in their tourism packages and services usually states this, however, it is often unprovable or even used as a greenwashing practice. For such reason, the Interreg Med project has launched “DestiMED plus project” to develop high-quality ecotourism experiences (packages) that benefit conservation and local communities in nine protected areas across several Mediterranean countries (Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Albania, and Greece). The newly created innovative ecotourism packages are results of good cooperation between local, regional, and international partners both in tourism and conservation. To quantitatively analyse the environmental pressure associated with each ecotourism package developed in and around Protected Areas (PAs) in the Mediterranean Region, a customized version of Ecological Footprint Accounting tool was developed. In that sense, specific indicators were defined to monitor sustainability for each service offered in the ecotourism package including accommodation ; food and drink ; mobility and transfer ; activity and services. According to the DestiMED research results, along with transportation services, food & drink services have the highest Ecological Footprint in the ecotourism package. This is due to the large amount of fish and meat products consumed as protein-based diets have a larger Footprint compared to plant-rich diets. Furthermore, the further food’s place of origin contributes to the higher Footprint because it requires more transportation and causes higher greenhouse emissions, while locally food produced (within a 60-km radius) helps ensure a lower Footprint. Therefore, implementation of short (local) food supply chain in tourism destination is highly recommended because it reinforces tourism sustainable development and provides authentic experience of the local cuisine to each tourist.

sustainable development, tourism package, gastronomy, indicators

nije evidentirano