PAUL NURSEY
VICTORIA – One year ago, Destination Greater Victoria (DGV) and its members celebrated Greater Victoria becoming the first urban destination in North America to receive the Responsible Tourism Institute’s prestigious Biosphere Certification for our commitment to environmental sustainability, cultural diversity, equity, and social responsibility.
For DGV, Biosphere certification marked an important milestone in a sustainability journey that began in 1992 under the leadership of our then CEO Lorne White and the Chair of a newly formed Environment Committee, Bill Turner. We’ve come a long way since then and nobody tells that story better than Bill. You can join Bill for a trip down memory lane in our new podcast series called Every Visitor Counts. The podcast offers an informative and entertaining look at a wide range of tourism-related topics that show how, more than ever, every visitor counts for all of us in Greater Victoria. Every Visitor Counts is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Deezer, as well as CHEK+, on CHEK’s website and at tourismvictoria.com.
At our Biosphere certification celebration in March 2023, we committed to a multi-faceted corporate Biosphere Action Plan that included working closely with DGV members to help them achieve their own certification status. After a year of providing coaching, workshops and guidance, we’re thrilled we’ve exceeded our target and now have 66 DGV members linked to Biosphere, with 13 of them certified. We congratulate them all for their commitment to sustainable practices and actively implementing innovative measures.
One of the strengths of the Biosphere program is its focus on continuous improvement. To that end, in 2024 DGV will work on furthering our sustainability efforts through a variety of actions.
We will work to reduce our corporate carbon and waste footprint and maintaining carbon neutrality by offsetting emissions that cannot be eliminated. We’ll support projects and partnerships that showcase the potential of regenerative tourism and support local ecological restoration. We’ll demonstrate and encourage thought leadership in sustainable tourism practices, including partnering to host the IMPACT Sustainability Travel and Tourism Conference. We will further align DGV’s operations with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
We will do these things and more because, while Greater Victoria was named a leading sustainable destination in North America in 2023, as Bill Turner and our current Sustainability Advisory Committee would say, when it comes to sustainability and environmental responsibility, there is no finish line.
Paul Nursey is the President and CEO of Destination Greater Victoria
