The International Centre for Responsible Tourism-Australia (ICRT) is a member of a not-for-profit network of sister agencies around the work whose aim is to make better places for people to live in and better places to visit by applying the Responsible Tourism Cape Town Declaration (2002).
Responsible Tourism seeks to apply triple bottom line sustainability actions. We believe that Responsible Tourism is a partnership between tourism provider and visitor where the environment is nurtured, social understanding enhanced and local communities prosper.
This requires the integration of sustainable production and consumption with tourism experience design to enhance cultural respect, drive visitor expenditure to help sustainably develop communities whilst transitioning to renewable resource use and lowing unsustainable material consumption.
Tourism is one of the world’s largest employers and commercial sectors; consequently it is a large consumer of non-renewable resources, visitor to communities’ places and user of nature. Its global impact could therefore be put to considerable positive effect, by decoupling unsustainable production from consumption through innovative experience design and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The ICRT’s main areas of focus, which support many of these goals to:
- Utilise technology to empower responsible action
- Build peoples’ capacity to apply more sustainable practices and become more resilient
- Contribute to biodiversity rehabilitation and cultural conservation
- Adapt resource use to be sustainable especially in the use of water and energy
- Foster partnerships in destinations to unlock the economic potential of tourism and reduce poverty
- Reduce food waste in hospitality to contribute to zero hunger for local communities and reduce CO2 emissions
The ICRT is embarking on a series of projects that integrate these UN Sustainable Development Goals using innovative tools which help measure consumption, educate tourism businesses, advise visitors and improve their overall experience.
The ICRT seeks to work with partners to progress these goals and is a member of the UN Sustainable Tourism 10 Year Framework (10YFP), and actively collaborates with Ecotourism Australia, the Environmental Centre for Arab Towns and the Responsible Hospitality Partnership together with sister ICRTs in Africa and Europe.