In the frame of the EU Green Week 2021, the European Regions Research and Innovation Network (ERRIN), one of Be.CULTOUR partners, hosted an online Partner Event focused on sustainable practices towards zero-pollution tourism.

On Monday 7 June 2021 the event was organised by the ERRIN Working Group on Cultural Heritage & Tourism in the frame of the EU Green Week 2021 – Zero pollution for healthier people and planet. At the event, the Be.CULTOUR project was presented by the coordinator Antonia Gravagnuolo, Researcher at CNR- IRISS, highlighting how it is now crucial to move beyond tourism through a longer-term human-centred development perspective, enhancing cultural heritage and landscape values. By targeting deprived remote, peripheral or deindustrialised areas and cultural landscapes, as well as over-exploited areas, H2020 Be.CULTOUR project will co-develop long-term heritage-led development activities in the areas involved and enhance inclusive economic growth, communities’ well-being and resilience, nature regeneration, and effective cooperation at cross border, regional and local level. Finally, bringing circular economy into cultural tourism will boost the creation of new sustainable and slow mobility systems, the reduction of natural resources consumption, the regeneration of natural, cultural and human capital, the valorisation and adaptive reuse of less known or even abandoned heritage sites and the preservation of a healthy and beautiful environment.

Three ERRIN members were also selected to share their experience implementing tourism practices focused on natural preservation, sustainable mobility, and digital uptake in tourism with a focus on culture. Janie Neumann, Sustainable Tourism Manager at VisitScotland, Vanessa Glindmeier, Business Support Officer at Historic Environment Scotland and Claire Munro, Communications Workstream Lead at Zero Waste Scotland, highlighted how Scotland’s tourism industry can deliver on Scotland’s national commitment to Net Zero Green House Gas emissions by 2045, highlighting examples of activities that look to reduce various kinds of pollution through actively engaging visitors as well as businesses and deliver on Scotland’s NetZero commitments.

Other interventions related to sustainable tourism were presented: Aivar Ruukel, (EDEN) Board of Administrators – representing the Sooma National Park, recipient of the EDEN award in 2007 in the category Tourism and protected areas; Ward Segers, Project Coordinator at Visit Limburg, with Flemish experience of building 2000 km of cycling paths that turned Limburg into a well-known cycling destination; Ramón Lasaosa, Councillor for Culture and Festivities of the Huesca City Council presented local practices linking natural heritage preservation and tourism activities.