Towards sustainability with sustainable travel

Lahti has a vision to be a leading environmentally focused city by developing sustainable development in all of its activities and functions and it has named sustainable development as one of its values along with desire for development, community and responsibility, in its new strategy 2025. Sustainability is also central in the newly published tourism strategy of Päijät-Häme region, which emphasises the importance of community responsibility of tourism enterprises. ICER (Innovative Concept of Eco-accommodation approach in rural Regions: Public support policies for eco-investors) project is a project that will further promote sustainability especially in the field of tourism and accommodation in Lahti Region. Lahti Region Environmental Service is one of seven European partners in ICER. The project started in January 2010 and will finish in December 2012. The main aims are to promote sustainable travel and environmentally friendly accommodation and to create more effective economic attractiveness policies in rural areas in the tourist sector. The project is financed by the Interreg IVC programme of European Regional Development Fund. To exchange experiences and good practices, which are the base of the project, study visits to each partner region will be organised. As an output of the project a Public policies recommendations book will be published to help public bodies to gain better results from sustainable tourism as a component of regional development.

Ski resort of Mes-silä is taking steps towards sustainable tourism and thus contributing to the aims of the tourism strategy of Päijät-Häme

In Lahti the activities will be focused on environmentally friendly accommodation. Workshops with local tourism SME's are planned to be held for example about minimising their carbon footprint and environmentally friendly building and renovation.

ICER project is part of a larger plan since Lahti is involved in the planning of a Päijänne-Vesijärvi biosphere reserve. Biosphere reserves are part of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere programme and they are model regions for sustainable development. ICER project is a step towards more sustainable . living and thus brings important concrete action to the process of promoting and becoming a biosphere reserve.