Blue Flag (quality mark)
The Blue Flag (also often English Blue Flag , French Pavillon Bleu ) is an eco-label from the field of sustainable tourism , which is awarded every year to beaches on coasts, inland waters and marinas , which in the previous season had standards in terms of environmental education, environmental management and service quality and water quality. The Blue Flag is awarded by the Foundation for Environmental Education to beaches in more than 40 countries in Europe , South Africa , New Zealand , Canada and the Caribbean .
Award
In order for a beach, harbor or bathing area to be awarded the Blue Flag, an application must first be made by the relevant municipality. National and international bodies then check whether the required criteria have been met. The award is made for one season. Additional control visits are intended to ensure compliance with the criteria. In the event of violations, the Blue Flag will be withdrawn.
It is estimated that maintaining certification costs a five-digit amount each year, for example around 40,000 euros in Ireland .
Development of the program
The idea of awarding compliance with environmental criteria with a Blue Flag originated in France in 1985 , where it was awarded to the first coastal communities for wastewater treatment and bathing water quality . The Blue Flag was thus one of the first environmental labels in tourism. In 1987, as part of the European Year for the Environment, the Foundation for Environmental Education ( FEE ) began with the support of the European Commission to expand the criteria and introduce the program across Europe. The aim was to promote compliance with the European Bathing Water Directive (then 76/160 / EEC, now replaced by 2006/7 / EC). First of all, each country developed its own criteria for the Blue Flag. In 1992 the participants drafted a common European catalog of criteria. From 2001, the first countries outside Europe took part. In 2006, a globally standardized catalog of criteria for awarding the quality seal was created. In 2007 over 3000 beaches and marinas in over 40 countries participated in the program. The program cooperates with the United Nations Environment Program and the World Tourism Organization .
criteria
Criteria for beaches
Operators need to get the Blue Flag for example
- Exhibit information about the environment of the coastal zone, bathing water quality, rules of conduct and the "Blue Flag" program yourself and offer environmental activities,
- Comply with requirements and standards for bathing water quality and treatment of wastewater: analyze a water sample every 30 days at the most and inform about it after another month at the latest,
- set up a beach management committee, comply with legal requirements, meet waste disposal standards,
- Ensure the presence of lifeguards, first aid material, safe access to the beach and provide emergency plans.
If higher national standards exist for individual criteria, for example water quality, then these have priority.
The Blue Flag is often used as a figurehead for certain tourist regions. If a beach area is awarded the flag, this should indicate a very high standard of cleanliness of the bathing water and the surrounding nature.
Criteria for marinas
The four main criteria on which the assessment is based are:
- the public relations work carried out by the port concessionaire , through which the general public and users of the port are to be made aware of the need for environmental and nature protection and to be encouraged to act accordingly;
- the planning and design of the port and its surroundings with regard to reception and port facilities as well as security;
- preservation of the natural environment (prevention and reduction of environmental damage, sanitation);
- the handling of waste disposal and cleaning of the port.
In the award-winning ports, the water quality in the port basin is checked and announced through regular analyzes during the season. The sign of compliance with certain quality specifications that is visible from a distance is the blue flag waving at full mast. In the event of a temporary non-compliance with certain criteria, it will be set to half-mast until the corresponding defect has been rectified.
effectiveness
Certification systems for beaches, such as the Blue Flag, play an important role in that they support beach managers in systematically improving beach quality and in striving for certain minimum standards. In Italy, for example, the Blue Flag has helped beach communities improve their waste separation, set up new or improved sewage treatment plants and seek further certification.
For beach visitors, on the other hand, the Blue Flag plays a subordinate role. Surveys in Europe have shown that the Blue Flag has a comparatively high level of awareness of around 25-30% compared to other eco-labels in tourism. When deciding to go to a particular beach, however, only 1-10% of respondents said that the award was one of the most important criteria for them (by far the most important criteria were the cleanliness of the beach and water, safety and proximity to the beach Beach). The majority of those surveyed were not exactly aware of the standards that the Blue Flag is supposed to signal compliance with.
There are doubts about the effectiveness of the water quality standards, a core element of the award. In the Caribbean, water quality requirements have been lowered because too much contaminated wastewater ended up in the sea. In Europe, the criteria are based on the Designated Bathing Area Status of the EU - a standard that until 2008 was viewed by individual authors as inadequate and could be met by almost every beach resort. With Directive 2006/7 / EC , the requirements have been increased since then. In South Africa, in independent samples on the fourth beach of Clifton, a suburb of Cape Town , significant contamination with Escherichia coli was found. Consumption water is assumed to be the cause, which largely uncleaned reaches the sea via rivers or directly. Beaches and water are at times very polluted by faeces, depending on the currents and tides. The authors consider the time intervals between water samples set by the Blue Flag to be too long.
literature
- Foundation for Environmental Education (Ed.): The Blue Flag - eco-label for beaches and marinas . October 2007 ( blueflag.org [PDF; 8.2 MB ]).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The blue flag as a figurehead. Retrieved June 20, 2013 .
- ↑ a b c d John McKenna, Allan T. Williams, J. Andrew G. Cooper: Blue Flag or Red Herring: Do beach awards encourage the public to visit beaches? In: Tourism Management . No. 32 , 2011, p. 576-588 , doi : 10.1016 / j.tourman.2010.05.005 .
- ↑ Xavier Font: Environmental certification in tourism and hospitality: progress, process and prospects . In: Tourism Management . No. 23 , 2002, p. 197-205 , doi : 10.1016 / S0261-5177 (01) 00084-X .
- ^ Foundation for Environmental Education (Ed.): 20 years of Blue Flag . 2007 ( blueflag.org [PDF]). blueflag.org ( Memento of the original from July 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Foundation for Environmental Education [FEE] (Ed.): Blue Flag Beach Criteria and Explanatory Notes 2014 . ( blueflag.org [PDF]). blueflag.org ( Memento of the original from October 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Carla Creo, Claudia Fraboni: Awards for the Sustainable Management of Coastal Tourism Destinations: The Example of the Blue Flag Program . In: Journal of Coastal Research: Special Issue 61 - Management of Recreational Resources . 2011, p. 378 - 381 , doi : 10.2112 / SI61-001.43 .
- ^ Edda Weimann: Blue Flag Beaches - Bathers at risk for thalassogenic diseases. In: Journal of Environment and Ecology. Volume 5, No., 20141, pp. 38-45.
