The top positions of the EU Environmental Labels and Schemes indicator are led by destinations that offer the Biosphere system to their business network, for the adoption and demonstration of their contribution to sustainability and the United Nations SDGs and targets.
The European Union launches its new Environmental Labels and Schemes Indicator, which indicates the number of accommodations per destination that have successfully demonstrated their sustainable practices, publicly recognising them with an international sustainability certificate.
The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has developed this new Indicator in the EU Tourism Dashboard. Its function is to characterise the tourism ecosystem through country indicators, and to track progress towards lower environmental impact, increased digitisation and greater socio-economic resilience.
Among the indicators available in this scorecard, the information corresponding to the European indicator of eco-labels and certifications is presented at different territorial levels: country, autonomous community and province. The data will be updated annually in order to be able to observe their evolution over the years.
Among the top 10 of this European Indicator of territories with the highest accumulation of certified accommodation are the Province of Barcelona and Tenerife. Also, in the top 20 are the territories of Gran Canaria, Center of Portugal and Alentejo, all of which are member destinations of the Biosphere Community. These are tourism-territorial institutions that promote a system of continuous improvement to connect with the business network, through tools that measure and demonstrate the sustainable efforts of the destination as a whole, with respect to the 17 SDGs and 169 targets of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
All these destinations develop sustainability plans aligned with the 17 SDGs and 169 UN goals, with UN-SDSN indicators, through the Biosphere system of management and international recognition in sustainability. Among their lines of action to achieve increasingly sustainable tourism models, these territories have participation programmes for companies, where they can access tools to help them adopt more sustainable business models, measuring the contribution of their efforts to the principles and objectives of the UN.
The JRC plays a key role at various stages of the EU policy cycle, in almost all EU policy areas. Its purpose is to contribute with different initiatives to the overall objective of the ‘Horizon Europe’ programme, the European Union's key funding instrument for climate change research and innovation, the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the boosting of EU competitiveness and growth.
Among the JRC's actions is the creation of this EU Tourism Dashboard, whose information is based on the latest available data, collected from reliable sources and processed in order to provide meaningful indicators for the tourism ecosystem. Specifically, the EU Tourism Dashboard has been developed by the JRC and DG GROW, in collaboration with Eurostat, DG Environment and in consultation with EU Member States through the Tourism Advisory Committee.
