Moving Towards Sustainable Tourism and Climate Change Action Planning: The 1st Transnational Cross-Fertilisation Workshop by NaTour4CChange
The first transnational cross-fertilisation exchange workshop of the Interreg Euro-MED NaTour4CChange project took place on 18 June 2025 online, with a focus on regional climate strategies and methodologies related to coastal tourism.
The workshop opened with Izidora Markovic from the Institute for Tourism (Croatia), Lead Partner of the project, who presented the main objectives and highlighted achievements in the development of climate strategies and action plans through collaboration among the ten Mediterranean partners. The event aimed to foster peer learning and inspire action, recognizing that not all regions are at the same level of readiness: some already have regional climate action plans, while others are still in early stages of defining frameworks.
In the first session, project partners shared their regional experiences, outlining challenges, priority actions, stakeholder engagement, and progress:
Andalusia (Spain)
Jose Francisco Benitez Santos presented Andalusia’s Climate Action Plan, emphasizing the strong cooperation between tourism and environmental ministries. He focused on priority actions around sustainable infrastructure and resource efficiency.
Zadar County (Croatia)
Mira Zovko shared the region’s strategy for climate mitigation and adaptation, highlighting a robust methodology based on risk assessments that revealed key vulnerabilities affecting tourism.
Sardinia (Italy)
Luisa Mulas outlined Sardinia’s progress in strategic planning for both climate adaptation and sustainable tourism. She stressed the importance of integrating existing plans and the positive role of participatory workshops in stakeholder engagement.
Neretva Canton (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Sabina Galić described the challenges faced in developing a climate action plan, including legal gaps and the need for stronger institutional support to advance nature-based solutions tailored to tourism.
Crete (Greece)
Kyriaki Theodorou spoke about the specific climate pressures on coastal tourism and the region’s efforts to shift seasonality as a potential opportunity. She presented Crete’s mid- and long-term plans, including actions in coastal management, water infrastructure, and spatial planning legislation.
In a second round of discussions, other regions and external experts shared their experiences and provided comments and feedback, with Caterina Amengual Morro from the Climate Change Department of the government of the Balearic Islands, recalling the importance of tourism for the economy of the region and presenting their experience in in dealing with mitigation and the decrease of greenhouse gases emissions, improvement in renewable energy production, and monitoring of carbon footprint.
Alicia Farjado from The Travel Foundation, continued this session, providing the audience with a general peer-review of the discussed regional strategies and planning. She highlighted the Blueprint for tourism and climate action plan, developed by the Interreg Euro-MED Community4Tourism projects, and the Toolkit for climate action planning that were delivered recently to support regions and destinations in structuring their strategies.
To conclude, Izidora Markovic highlighted the barriers to deliver the planned actions, especially in relation with the availability of specific data, financial resources and indicators related to climate change action planning and tourism. In addition, even if climate risks and impacts are obvious, sometimes other priorities remain higher in terms of evaluation, such as the economic impact of tourism. More practical activities should be also considered into the climate change action plans, to facilitate the climate actions delivery.
Finally, Jordi Juárez, from the CPMR IMC who moderated the workshop, announced the next 2nd transnational cross-fertilization workshop to be organised in the framework of the Global Ecotourism Forum from 22nd to 24th October, in Sant Fruitós del Bages nearby Barcelona. Please save the dates!
