Every year, more than 1.3 million tourists visit the island of Mauritius. In 2017, the tourism industry accounted for more than 12% of total gross domestic product and provided more than 30,000 direct jobs. The Mauritius Tourism Development Plan sets a target of acquiring “Green Destination” status for Mauritius by 2030. Promoting sustainable tourism that reduces tourism’s “footprint”, or negative environmental impacts, while improving its “handprint”, or positive sustainability impacts, especially for local communities, is key to green growth in Mauritius.
The Mauritius Tourism Authority, operating under the Ministry of Tourism, aims to foster the sustainable development of the tourism industry. Along with the Ministry of Tourism, it has developed a sustainable tourism standard and launched a scheme to support micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises according to the eco-label criteria. The Mauritius Tourism Authority has further embarked on “Sustainable Island Mauritius”, a project to assist tour operators (who drive most of the tourist business in Mauritius) in greening the tourism value chain through an innovative methodology called the Mauritius Pro-Handprint Innovation Framework, also known as the MauPHI Framework. This is being done in partnership with the Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP) in Germany. The handprint approach piloted by CSCP offers a promising solution, as it measures and communicates the positive sustainability impacts of products to strengthen innovation that creates positive impacts and reduces negative impacts. The SUS-ISLAND project thus aims to support tour operators and their suppliers in developing, promoting and scaling up tourism operations that reduce their value-chain footprints and improve handprints, while also improving tourist satisfaction.
