With the Green Destinations Silver Award, which we as the Plitvice Lakes National Park were proud to receive in autumn 2023, we have also committed to meeting individual sustainability criteria to improve or advance our sustainable practises. In the course of 2024, we have embarked on certain activities. One of them is the adoption of the Sustainability Report of the Plitvice Lakes National Park. The first report of this type is actually defined as a certain baseline, which, according to the activities described in the environmental, social and governance criteria, mainly refers to implementation in 2023, and the reports that will come in the coming years will always focus on the achievement of the quantitative and/or qualitative indicators of the individual activities.
The main activity of the National Park is the protection, care 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 the sustainable use of natural resources, which, together with other activities such as monitoring the condition and control of conditions and measures for nature conservation, contributes to the exceptional value of this area. For this reason, the environmental criteria related to the National Park should certainly include nature conservation, although according to the Green Destinations criteria there is a separate chapter on nature and landscape, in which we were awarded the highest score, and a chapter on environment and climate, in which adjustments are required for certain criteria.
The report also addresses the social criteria in the form of visits, educational activities, local products, etc. In short, everything that represents the national park’s focus on the community, both globally in the form of visits and locally in the form of scholarships, education and interpretation, local products and sporting activities.
The management criteria include a brief overview of financial sustainability and human resources based on 2023 data, as well as recommendations for sustainable management, a positive practice that encourages National Park staff to adopt sustainability in their workplace.
The path to sustainability and sustainable development according to the Sustainable Development Agenda is not easy and there are many sub-goals to be achieved by 2030, both at global and national level. However, all these individual sustainable practises and activities implemented in different sectors will certainly contribute to a positive direction and be an incentive for others to join this path.
