Community Standard Overview
Green Globe - Six Aspects Of Sustainable Community Development
Green Globe is the worldwide Benchmarking, Certification and Performance Improvement programme for communities and destinations. Green Globe assists organisations and communities to improve their economic, social and environmental sustainability all while being rewarded and recognised for it.
The Green Globe Community Standard provides communities with a framework to benchmark their environmental and social performance, to certify their performance, and to continuously improve their performance.
These achievements are all underpinned by the Green Globe Community Standard, which sets out the guidelines, procedures an organisation or community must follow to achieve sustainability.
The Standard is designed to empower local communities and to build on local initiatives. The Standard requires compliance with the regulatory environment for a Community. It underpins a clear sustainable vision for a Community, as well as focussing on sound planning systems to help achieve the vision. The Standard addresses key environmental issues facing the planet. It deals with environmental regeneration and environmental improvement as well as the conservation of existing heritage assets.
The Process - The Steps to Sustainable Community Development
The Green Globe Community Standard consists of key steps to establish the foundations for the community's journey to sustainable development. This process has two distinct stages:
- Benchmarking
- Certification
The Steps — Key Focus Areas for Community Development
Policy - The community must prepare an Environmental and Social Sustainability Policy which incorporates considerations appropriate to the location, nature, environmental, social and political context of the community and specifically includes tourism activity and development issues.
Benchmarking - The community must regularly record the level of impact of their activities, and keep records for at least three years. Communities benchmark their environmental and social performance annually against the Green Globe Benchmarking Indicators and achieve Green Globe Benchmarking above baseline performance for all indicators. This data is then submitted to Green Globe for assessment using the online Benchmarking software.
Compliance - The community must know and understand the environmental, public and occupational health and safety, hygiene and employment legislation and other requirements, like cultural/ heritage/archaeological significance to which the community is obliged to adhere.
Approach - Approach is the way in which a community commits to and manages their environmental and social sustainability performance. The approach must enable a community to meet the objectives of their sustainability policy and address actual and potential risks identified by a risk assessment.
Performance - This monitors the community's environmental and social performance. It provides a framework to assist communities improve sustainability and achieve best practice in the 10 Green Globe Key Performance Areas (see diagram below.)
Communication - This details the requirements for the community to communicate their environmental and social commitments, goals and objectives to all interested and relevant parties.
Key Focus Areas
- Sustainability policy
- Energy consumption
- Potable water consumption
- Solid waste reduction
- Environmental investment
- Resource conservation
- Improved social and cultural interactions
- Enhanced local socio-economic benefits
- Biodiversity conservation
- Air and water quality
The Certification process varies depending on the size and environmental impact of the organisation. Smaller companies with minimal impact are required to complete a simple risk assessment and Self Assessment checklist, while larger companies with potentially high impacts are required to complete more detailed versions of the same documents. In some cases, large organisations may have to implement an Environmental Management System.
The certification assessment requires communities to submit the Online Self Assessment Checklist. When this information has been provided to Green Globe, it is reviewed by a qualified auditor who undertakes an off-site assessment of the community's performance against the criteria in the Community Standard.
Once the certification assessment has been completed, communities are provided with a Certification Assessment Report which provides feedback of the community's performance. The report outlines improvement areas, corrective actions and future audit requirements.