With the Green Destinations gold award that we, as Plitvice Lakes National Park, proudly received in the fall of 2025 after the recertification process, which represents a continuation of sustainable activities since obtaining the Green Destinations silver award in 2023, have also undertaken obligations to implement and achieve sustainability criteria in order to improve or advance our sustainable practices. Of the many activities that have been initiated, one of these is the continuation of public reporting on annual activities through the Sustainability Report. Based on the data collected for 2024, and after the published report for 2023, we are bringing the Sustainability Report of Plitvice Lakes National Park for 2024. Since this report no longer represents the initial state of the activities described in the environmental, social and management criteria, it attempted to provide an overview of the achievement of quantitative and/or qualitative indicators of individual activities.
The primary activity of the National Park is the protection, maintenance and promotion of the national park with the aim of protecting and preserving the integrity of nature, ensuring the undisturbed development of natural processes and sustainable use of natural resources, which, along with further activities such as monitoring the conditions and measures for nature protection, contributes to the exceptional value of this area. For this reason, environmental criteria in the context of the national park also include nature protection. In the Green Destinations chapters, among others, there are chapters on Nature & Scenery and Culture & Tradition in which we have achieved maximum compliance of the criteria, while compliance is necessary for some criteria in the chapter on Environment & Climate.
The report further discusses social criteria through visitation, educational activities, local products, volunteer program, etc., in short, everything that represents the national park’s focus on the community, both global in terms of visits and local in terms of scholarships, the offer of certified local products, or sports activities.
The management criteria include a review of financial sustainability and a review of the monitoring of the economic impact of the national park and the human resources of the Institution based on the data collected for 2024. The last part provides recommendations for positive sustainable practices related to the topics of waste, food waste, light and noise pollution, energy use and other activities that were originally presented in the brochure “Sustainable practices in the Plitvice Lakes National Park and wider area”, published in early 2025.
The path towards sustainable development is not easy, but it is necessary given all the challenges we face as humanity. Individual sustainable practices and activities implemented in various sectors will certainly contribute to a positive direction and be an incentive for others to join this path.
