BECOMING GREEN - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 192

Harms earned a law degree in Costa Rica, and after working in business and as an
environmental consultant, she moved to Washington as the deputy chief of mission and
consul-general at the embassy of Costa Rica. Then she joined the U.N. Foundation.
Harms has zeroed in on the need to weed out the real ecotourist establishments from
the fake. The average person looking for a responsible way to travel didn't have a clue
which claim was genuine.
“There were so many missing elements in certification programs before: culture, com-
munity, destination and habitat. You could destroy a mangrove to build your hotel and still
receive a Green Globe certificate,” she told me in 2008 in the first of several interviews.
In September 2009, less than a year after the Barcelona announcement, Harms held
a reception in Washington to celebrate its creation. “We developed the criteria with
industry, always with industry. That is how we collaborate. It didn't take that much
money. . . . It was only about solutions,” she told me.
“The concept of tourism has changed with industrialization, yes, and standardization,”
said Harms. “You don't see any difference anymore between one place and another. It's
easier to build that way and provide standard service, but how can you preserve a sense of
place and culture? The complexity of the tourism industry works against sustainability.”
“Unless you create some tie to a place and its people, you won't have demand for sus-
tainable tourism,” she continued. “Our certification program will help all tourists find the
places that are still authentic.”
That sounds high-minded and slightly boring. It is the opposite. Behind the phrase “sus-
tainable tourism” is the wish to keep all of the intriguing, messy and exotic differences in
the world. The rules and regulations of sustainable tourism are meant, ironically, to avoid
a world that looks the same.
The criteria for certification were unveiled, reviewed and revised by 2011, with nearly
universal praise. That was the criteria I used to evaluate our voyage in Costa Rica.
Business understands the value of that label. People will search for it and often pay
more money for its reassurance, which means big profits can be made by being on the
ground floor in the certification scramble. “We are more like the police that recognize and
enforce the standards,” said Janice Lichtenwald of the Global Sustainable Tourism Coun-
cil.
Companies are lining up to become official certifiers. Green Globe, which is privately
owned, has already adopted the sustainable tourism standards and hopes to be able to cer-
tify hotels with the “Global Sustainable” label.
“Green Globe and other companies will make money from this, yes they will,” said
Lichtenwald. “There is a consumer desire for labeling—they expect it.”
Hotels, resorts and tour operators are willing to pay companies to certify they are on the
side of the angels, that visitors on vacation know they are not destroying the environment,
or playing on a golf course that had been home to poor peasants a year earlier.