I was pleased to hear recently Ecotourism Australia has taken drastic steps to preserve its ecotourism brand. They took Trek North Safaris to court for protect Eco Australia’s intellectual property and to protect the public from potentially misleading environmental marketing. Trek North Safaris was using the Ecotourism Australia ECO Certification logo without permission and was not a member of Ecotourism Australia nor certified by Ecotourism Australia. The Queensland Supreme Court ruled that the company was to cease use of the logo, destroy all items that contained the logo and pay Ecotourism Australia’s legal costs. This is the first case I’ve seen where legal action protect an ecotourism certification program and it marks an important point in the evolution of ecotourism. Ecotourism Australia has one of the world’s most recognizable ecotourism certification programs and stopping such fraudulent use ensures their brand retains its credibility. If certification programs are to succeed we need to aggressively weed out operators taking advantage of certification programs to simply ‘greenwash’ their marketing efforts. Bravo to Ecotourism Australia!
Carol