Following a process of meetings and collaboration stretching back to the last general elections in Cape Verde, the Travel Foundation has just signed an MoU with the two most important national level public sector tourism stakeholders for our TUI Care Foundation funded programme. These are the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment and the Ministry of Economy and Employment (tourism).
The main objective of this MoU is to enable us to support the implementation of a new government licencing and certification scheme for tour guides with a strong focus on managing environmental impacts. However, the MoU is overarching enough to cover other potential areas of cooperation. There is the opportunity to open a more permanent dialogue with influential government agencies and promote better coordination among public sector stakeholders.
We hope that the resulting collaborative working environment will enable the impacts of nature-based recreational activities carried out within sensitive natural environments to be monitored more carefully.
We are planning a workshop this year to bring public and private sector stakeholders together. Our aim is to facilitate the design of training and certification schemes for tour guides who interact with natural environments and biodiversity.