Background:

Increasing tourist inflow is taking a toll on the already fragile ecosystem around the National Parks and Reserve Forests in the country. There is need to balance the promotion of tourism with steps to ensure minimal negative environmental impact because of it. The Clean Destination project is an attempt to demonstrate how responsible tourism can take place by setting up sustainable practices in the villages in the catchment areas of national parks.

Objectives:

The Panna National Park is located in Panna district of Madhya Pradesh in India, close to the historic town of Khajuraho. There are 50 inhabited villages in the buffer zone. Of these 50 villages, 20 are small tribal villages where they practice more sustainable lifestyle with minimal waste generation, the project is being implemented in the remaining 30 villages. The objective is creating a model solution for Sustainable Waste Management system for the National Parks across the country through ‘Decentralized Waste Management’ and ‘Maximum Resource Recovery’, by setting up the required infrastructure for waste collection and processing, building capacities of the Gram Panchayats to set up, operate and monitor these systems and to work with the community to bring about a behaviour change towards source segregation and handing over their waste to the waste collection staff deployed by the Panchayats.