Sustainable tourism is a controversial subject. And I have been in the middle of controversy this week over the Cavo Sidero project in the North Eastern peninsula of Crete. It was featured in The Guardian this week as an ecological disaster! So why would Forum be working on a project like this?

To date, tourism has a pretty poor track record on sustainability, with a few exceptions. But we don’t think that's a good enough reason to steer clear of the sector. In fact, it's exactly why we want to get involved - to make sure we can all continue to enjoy holidays without causing damage to people or planet.

Cavo Sidero has the potential to showcase sustainable tourism - to show what sustainability looks and feels like and to make it aspirational. We want it to be a model for better holidays - and to use the learning from it to avoid the monstrosities that inhabit much of the Mediterranean coastline today. And let’s be clear here, sustainable tourism is not just about the environment (although that is a priority) it’s about human and social and financial aspects too.

The development is the brainchild of the Abbot of Moni Toplou, a bastion in the local community, who sees tourism as the best way to bring in income and jobs to the area and hence protect it from over-grazing, degradation and the slow death of depopulation (the young are currently leaving to find work elsewhere). He has commissioned The Minoan Group to develop the site. They came to us because they too want to achieve something remarkable that is sensitive to its environment and give something back to the local community.

Being a sustainable development charity we had many of the concerns that are being shared in the media this week. We wanted to know why you couldn’t leave the area as a wilderness; why you would want to build on a Natura 2000 site and what the alternatives were. We also wanted to know if the people who were going to do this were serious about sustainability. So, we thought long and hard and we asked a lot of questions. We read the environmental impact assessment (EIA) - which is extensive. We reviewed the sustainability management strategy. We went to the site and spoke to the Abbott and others about it. Our due diligence is not perfect but we wouldn’t have got involved if we didn’t think that it had real merit from a sustainability perspective.

From our explorations we were convinced that the alternatives were few and far between. The site needed investment to protect its ecological value - the old ‘use it or loose it philosophy’. In our view, having limited development that is controlled by one developer committed to protecting the ecological and archaeological features of the site is far preferable to the incremental development that we think would result otherwise. Uncontrolled building by a number of different players who lack a shared vision of sustainability would mean tourism as usual. We would lose a beautiful site and wouldn’t change anything in the process.

So we’ve engaged. This is clearly a risk for us, but we think that the challenge of sustainable development is so great that at some point you have to stop carping and to get your hands dirty. That’s what Forum for the Future is all about. With their support, we’re pushing the Minoan Group to be even better than their EIA (which is already best practice). To use rigorous sustainable design principles throughout, to have a comprehensive carbon strategy based on the carbon hierarchy (avoid first, then reduce, then replace with renewables, and finally offset as a last resort), to provide benefits to the local population and that’s just for starters.

It’s not easy. This is a challenging site that needs to be handled extremely carefully. But there’s something about Cavo Sidero that makes me think that these challenges will be overcome. Maybe it’s the Abbot’s track record - the wind farm, the renovated monastery, the organic olive oil. Or the Minoan Group’s desire to create something that is sustainable. It might be the beauty and potential of the site itself. What’s clear is that this project makes me optimistic that the clear conscience holiday for the many is more than just a pipe dream.

Find out more about our work with Cavo Sidero here.