For our Members at Linking Tourism & Conservation, Peter Prokosch has sent out the following letter at the beginning of this new year:

With some pictures from my last half years’ nature observations on the Lofoten (which I still see as a prominent Norwegian candidate for a larger UNESCO Biosphere Reserve), I like to wish you many opportunities to enjoy this new year. May inspiration from nature be a vital part of your life quality and your own abilities to inspire others to care for our wonderful planet!

For our shared global network of Linking Tourism & Conservation (LT&C), 2022 could become a trailblazing year. After we together in eight years managed to create or identify and profile more than 50 LT&C-Examples, our organisation should leapfrog to new dimensions. Most of our published world-leading tourism cases supporting national parks and other types of protected nature areas describe the status quo. We now need to accelerate activities and projects, which lead to many more and larger protected nature areas to raise the full potential and natural task of tourism to become a significant player for reaching the 30×30 goal. Repeating myself: The world has approached a crossroad, and the 30×30 biodiversity goal to protect by 2030 at least 30% of the natural land- and marine space of the entire world, is equally important for our future than the climate goal of keeping the further warming under 1,5 degrees. With this year’s COP15 of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), we expect that all nations of the world will decide to go for “30×30” as more than 70 nations, including the E.U., have done already. Together with our partner, Campaign for Nature, LT&C is committed to the 30×30 goal. Our mission is to get in particular the nature-based tourism industry on the same path. 

Within our present strategic process, where we already have agreed that “going for 30×30” is our main purpose and that we need to engage in larger 30×30-targeted projects, we soon may come to final decisions on joint ventures with other organisations and may move our main base to Germany, a world-leading tourism exporting nation. You will soon hear more about our next steps, and you are welcome to approach me individually if you want to engage yourself in this process. 

As a first important signal from you to continue joining us on this critical path, you may already act on the attached invoice at the beginning of this year and renew your membership.

I wish you a peaceful, enjoyable and meaningful new year, where we all have many opportunities to inspire others to join our way of caring for the earth.

Peter Prokosch

(Chairman of the LT&C Board)

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If you are not a member of our global LT&C network yet, you may have a look on our member page, who is there already and whether it could not be of interest for you as well.