Las Salinas – the salt flats – are 5 kim from Playa Viva near the Pacific Coast of Mexico, about 45 minutes south of the resort of Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa. 120 families are members of a salt harvesting co-op. Of these, eighty are actively harvesting salt. Of those, less than half are using traditional means to harvest the salt. Playa Viva is a sustainable boutique hotel located nearby. Playa Viva has been working in this area for the last for years with the goal to go beyond green (doing less damage) and sustainable (net neutral) to be a truly “regenerative” resort, improving the biodiversity and resilience of the ecology and community.

Inability of small and medium sized accommodation providers to purchase services they really need like clean energy technologies and/or market access/e-commerce services. Typically it is hard for small businesses, primarily in the hospitality sector to collateralize their assets (i.e. their rooms stock) and/or gain access to finance from traditional lenders (especially in the developing world). High energy costs and a lack of market access due to insufficient e-commerce/online competitiveness are critical constraints to their long-term financial sustainability.

An owner of the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort in Lake Placid, New York, Jennifer Holderied has established herself as a recognized global leader for her visionary environmental GREEN programs and initiatives on a state, national and global level. She has pursued green travel innovations, helped protect the Adirondack Mountains: one of the earths only Carbon Sinks, is a recognized leader for her environmental leadership, champion of the environment for her educational leadership to guests and everyone worldwide who visits Lake Placid, New York.

As a collaborative endeavor, the Indigenous Tourism and Biodiversity Website Award is the high point of a decade-plus conservation with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Oliver Hillel and numerous friends – indigenous and non-indigenous peoples – about the best ways to develop indigenous tourism. As a non-indigenous person myself, I ask what are the best ways that other non-indigenous peoples connect with individuals and communities who take pride in their indigenous heritage.

Raw Wildlife Encounters was born out Jessica McKelson’s passion for, and dedication to the conservation of Indonesia. One of the earth’s few remaining biodiversity hotspots, Tangkahan is home to some of the world’s most endangered wildlife including Sumatran Tigers, Orang-utans, Asia Rhinos and Asian Elephants. The region is perched on the edge of Gunung Leuser National Park, an area that has been disseminated by illegal logging for timber and to make way for oil palm plantations.

In 2009 Wayne Sentman initiated a novel CO2 offset program for the San Francisco based non-profit marine conservation organization, Oceanic Society. Wayne worked to form a partnership between Oceanic Society, a Boston Public School (Warren Prescott School), and a Harvard University, graduate student founded education non-profit, Quen.ch.

Darwin’s Enchanted Isles are one of our planets most precious and unique ecosystems, home to an extraordinary profusion of exotic, often endemic flora and fauna. Tourism to this remote volcanic archipelago is both part of the solution and also part of the problem. Humans have unwittingly brought alien species that compete with native plants and animals. The growing number of settlers migrating from the mainland of Ecuador to the islands has put pressure on a fragile environment that imperils the entire ecosystem. As a result in 2007, UNESCO declared Galapagos as a World Heritage Site at risk.

TIES Innovation Award has been created to recognize and honor individuals and organizations who demonstrate leadership in innovative actions that effectively promote sustainable tourism and bring tangible benefits to communities and conservation. The Award winners – one individual and one organization – will be honored for their best practices and innovative actions, judged based on one example of an innovative project, product, or program developed in the previous year that supports the goal of uniting communities, conservation, and sustainable travel.

One of the most important and endangered type of forests in Estonia is Western Taiga. Western Taiga is a complex forest habitat type, ranging from dry pine forest (Pinus sylvestris) to damp spruce forests (Picea abies). Some stands in such forests may be quite young, having regenerated after a forest fire that occurred over hundred years ago, while others are significantly more mature.