- Published: 03.08.2018.
INHERIT - sustainable tourism strategies to conserve and valorise the Mediterranean coastal and maritime natural heritage
The INHERIT project has been approved for co-financing within the INTERREG V-B MEDITERRANEAN Programme 2014-2020, Priority Axis 3: Protecting and promoting Mediterranean natural and cultural resources, Specific Objective 3.1: To enhance sustainable the development policies for more efficient valorisation of natural resources and cultural heritage in coastal and adjacent maritime areas of a sustainable and responsible coastal and maritime tourism in the MED Area.
It is an integrated project with 15 partners from all 10 Mediterranean countries situated in the MED Programme Area. The project aims to conserve and valorise natural heritage in MED coastal and maritime tourist destinations. INHERIT will promote sustainable tourism alleviating seasonality and tackling a) the surpassing of the hosting capacity of tourism destinations, b) illegal construction, c) huge waste production, d) devastation and erosion. INHERIT will develop a MED tourism community and policies to advance natural heritage tourism development in MED coastal zones. The project will support territorial authorities and actors to develop and improve the necessary planning policies to utilise in a both sustainable and revenue-generating way all the unique features of the natural heritage of the coastal and maritime zone of the Mediterranean. The project’s duration is 48 months. Total project budget amounts to € 5,612.660.00 out of which 85%, i.e. € 4,643.601.00 is ERDF funded and € 127.160,00 is IPA funded.INHERIT aims to improve public policies that capitalise on best practices to protect natural heritage, bring to the fore underdeveloped tourism activities & destinations, and re-brand MED to European markets as an area that efficiently protects its natural heritage. Hence, INHERIT works to improve cooperation, joint and integrated planning and to better manage conflicting interests in developing the necessary infrastructure and activities, such as a) natural heritage-themed touristic routes, maps and trails, b) best practices for the sustainable touristic development of natural monuments, and c) natural heritage tourism themed applications for hotels and various activities. Finally, INHERIT will engage in an awareness raising campaign to re-brand the touristic profile of each region in the Mediterranean, thus advancing green growth in the Mediterranean.
The project will achieve these aims by:
- developing a number of studies and operational frameworks (M1)
- pilot testing the developed methods and services to ensure their integration in policies (M2)
- capitalising on the results of M1 and M2 to further develop action plans, tools and applications for the advancement of natural heritage tourism in each region (M3).