The Minister of Environment, Adrián Peña signed the regulations that formalize the processes of a Distinction of good environmental practices for tourism providers in protected areas. Initiative, which has the support of the French government through the French Fund for the Global Environment (FFEM).
The purpose of the initiative is to promote and enhance the development of sustainable production and consumption methods for goods and services to improve the economic capabilities and living conditions of the area’s inhabitants.
The objective of the beginning of this process is to travel together with the applicants the path of granting recognition, aligned to the fulfillment of the conservation objectives of each area defined for this instance.
The minister highlighted the value of this tool, since “it allows identifying those who comply with certain conservation guidelines” of the natural and cultural values of the protected areas of Uruguay, and contribute to the local development of the populations linked to them. This is an initiative that began in the tourism production chain, but its application is expected to be extended to the fishing and grassland livestock chains in protected areas.
The chief maintained that the signing of this regulation “is the culmination of a long-term work” and acknowledged that “we are going to learn as we go and improve this tool that will allow producers to have a quality differential.”
Project
The Project “Development of sustainable modalities of production and consumption of goods and services in the protected areas of the Uruguayan SNAP and their territorial surroundings” addresses these three chains in the protected areas Esteros de Farrapos and Islas del Río Uruguay (Río Negro), Montes del Queguay (Paysandù), Laguna Garzón (Maldonado and Rocha) and Laguna de Rocha (Rocha), and Valle del Lunarejo (Rivera). The hierarch reported that “although it starts with five protected areas in tourist services, the idea is to scale to other products and services and achieve this distinction for all areas of the National System of Protected Areas”, always considering as a reference the regulations that regulate its use as the income decrees and/or the management plan of each one of them.
The resolution, which was signed within the framework of the Sustainable Tour of the Ministry of Environment at Expo Prado 2022, was attended by representatives of the French Embassy in Uruguay and the director of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Ministry of Environment, Gerardo Evia, who recognized that the concretion of this distinction is the result of an “accumulation process with the team of the National System of Protected Areas that is based on the standards of the UNIT standard for Sustainable Tourism and the Guidelines for Public Use in Protected Areas ”.
In turn, Evia reported that it is a brand that is owned by the Ministry of Environment, “managed by the National System of Protected Areas through the National Directorate of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services to which service providers can apply voluntarily. tourist services that develop their activities within the areas”.
