A Cambodian ecolodge has been named one of the top 100 sustainable destinations in the world.
Green Destinations has announced that the Cardamom Tented Camp ecolodge in Cambodia has been awarded one of the world’s Top 100 Destination Sustainability Stories for 2021.
The statement was made on October 5th during the annual online conference of Green Destinations, a non-profit organization located in the Netherlands dedicated to sustainable tourism.
The yearly program has been in place since 2014. The judges picked Cardamom Tented Camp from among 28 tourist experiences from across the world in the Nature & Ecotourism category.
The other 72 wins were in localization and decarbonization of the local supply chain, communities and culture, environment and climate, and tourism reset and recovery. Green Places suggested that “with the tourist sector undergoing very tough circumstances in the last year or two, the perseverance and hard work of these destinations to become more responsible should be appreciated.
” The 2021 decision was chosen by the quality, transferability, and, more importantly, the level of creativity of the stories.”
The goal of the top 100 sustainability tales initiative, according to Albert Salman, President of Green Destinations, is to “inspire responsible tourism leadership throughout the world.”
"Since Cardamom Tented Camp opened in 2017, we've helped protect 18,000 hectares of forest by channelling income from the camp to support 12 forest rangers who have done an outstanding job of reducing illegal logging, wildlife hunting, and sandbank dredging,"
"Our tagline has been 'Your Stay Keeps the Forest Standing' since the beginning''
The Green Destination judges scrutinized our work.
They saw that our success as a world-class and inspirational conservation tourism initiative could be replicated elsewhere.”
In an earlier Q&A session for the online conference on October 5th, Niemeijer told Green Destination online conference attendees that Cardamom Tented Camp was founded on three principles: a belief in visitor dispersion to off-the-beaten-track locations away from over-crowded hubs; a commitment to collaborate with experts, such as NGO Wildlife Alliance; and a commitment to work with local communities, and a firm conviction in the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit, which had to be unshakable if the initiative was to be genuinely sustainable.
