The partnership aims to contribute to local economic development in Small Island Developing States by:- Assessing tourism quality and sustainability of SIDS islands. - Evaluating and improving their status as sustainable tourism destinations, including shared focus on energy, water and climate adaptation and mitigation.- Strengthening local capacity to enhance sustainability performance, and to enhance destination quality.- Creating a coordinated framework to continue, improve and structure the existing cooperation in the field of tourism destination sustainability, between the Green Destinations network and stakeholders in a number of SIDS destinations.

The Small Islands - Green Destination program will build capacity within small islands to become sustainable tourism destinations, through an official recognition as Green Destinations by the end of the programme. This Green Destination recognition will be the basis of the island brand, which then can be improved by the islands.Initial aspect of capacity development and training targeting local government and business include: sharing Green Destinations assessment, interactive training seminars and webinars. These initial services can be provided at no costs to all islands.In partnership with islands, further interactive steps include local implementation of criteria and indicators; continuous improvement of local knowledge, capacity, and policies; and working with local businesses in developing economic strategies and unique island sustainable tourism destination brands; and if suitable, facilitating targeted external sustainable investments.The Global Sustainable Tourism Review (GSTR) that has been developed by Green Destinations is a Destination Sustainability Support System making the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria for Destinations (GSTC-D) fully operational for any destination in the world, with the aim to help destinations in improving, measuring, my touring, and benchmarking on all relevant aspects of their tourism development strategy, including certification on the basis of the GSTC.T

Making use of the Green Destinations GSTR Destination Assessment tools, including self-assessment, it's possible at any time, online or on-site. Use will be free of charge for SIDS destinations.Every six weeks a new Green Destinations Seminar will start in another language. During each seminar period of three months a number of places will be reserved for participants from this SIDS destinations, free of charge.Green Destinations Webinars, both as part of the seminars and standalones, can be made accessible to participants from SIDS destinations.

The Green Destinations team for this partnership is Drs Albert Salman (Green Destinations NL), Professor Magdalena A K Muir (Aarhus University, Denmark), and Suzanne van der Veeken (Green Destinations Spain).Voluntary participation by island and local governments etc. with technical support by the Green Destinations team.Green Destinations is able to facilitate and ensure efficient coordination of actions together with all participating SIDS destinations through a task force (the main governing body of the partnership), using online communication tools. Key actors in the partnership will be represented in the task force, ensuring adequate and well-informed discussions within the task force.

Green Destinations (The Netherlands, Spain) Coastal & Marine Union (EUCC) (The Netherlands, Spain, Lithuania). QualityCoast International (The Netherlands). Global Sustainable Tourism Network (GSTN). Sustainable Energy Development and Sustainable Tourism Projects & Centre for Energy Technologies, Aarhus University (Herning, Denmark).