Lake Tahoe is a National Treasure and world class destination!
On July 26, 1997, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order to protect natural, recreational, and ecological resources in the Lake Tahoe Region (Executive Order 13057). Because of that executive order, many entities were formed to regain and sustain the 100 feet of water clarity the Lake once had for millennia. The Lake currently hovers around 60 feet. Many groups have provided relentless and expensive, billions of dollars, for 24/7 maintenance services required to protect our National Treasure.
Part of this effort has included paying experts who come from outside the watershed. They usually are hired through government issued RFPs - Request For Proposals. The consultant's task is usually to guide stakeholders (local business, government, nonprofits and the public) in creating shared visions and plans for tourism hosting, transit, infrastructure, housing, recreation and sustainable prosperity. One large challenge has been the difficulty in having dedicated ongoing on-the-ground teams who actually sort and implement the wealth of public/private insight provided by the consultants, so that their work is utilized. Unfortunately, while much has been accomplished, our fragile ecosystem is still straining under the weight of a growing unsustainable tourism demand.
Therefore, the concerned and generous people at TRPA (Tahoe Regional Planning Agency), the Tahoe Fund, Tahoe Visitor Authority, Chambers of Commerce and USFS (United States Forest Service) recently partnered to fund a new RFP - A 2021 Tourism Initiative to hire a Sustainable Travel Consultant team to guide local stakeholders in the creation of ”Lake Tahoe Future of Tourism Shared Vision & Destination Stewardship Roadmap"
These funding partners have received eight proposals from national Sustainable Travel Consultants who are ready to guide local stakeholders to move more aggressively in adopting sustainability principles that could encourage a more responsible travel experience.
At the same time this effort is about to start, two local universities are merging, the University Nevada Reno /UNR and Sierra Nevada University SNU (located in Incline Village). They are becoming one larger entity. The SNU location will most likely become the 'Tahoe campus' offering environmental programs, which is ideal since UC Davis, also located on SNU campus, is the epicenter for Tahoe's world class Limnology research and programs. UC Davis also is partnered with the Desert Research Institute on a Lake Tahoe clarity project!
Al Gore, at the 2013 Tahoe Executive Summit said, “The future will look at this Lake and either ask, ”Why didn’t you do something?…or How did you do this? If we succeed in protecting Lake Tahoe our answer will be because we found a way to make political collaboration a renewable resource”How might this moment in time respond to Al Gore's call for political collaboration?
Sustainable Tahoe was formed in 2010 to accelerate the adoption of Geotourism (destination stewardship) in the Tahoe basin. Since then Sustainable Tahoe's volunteer team has facilitated various demonstrations, implementation templates and frameworks to create and enroll visitors in fun, meaningful activities that sustain or enhance the destination.
Al Gore's call for political collaboration is upon us now since many consider the climate emergency we are now in as an opportunity to connect incoming expertise with ongoing dedicated students eager to learn and apply new travel strategies for the world they will inherit. Both efforts are mostly public funded, therefore influenced by the political will of federal, state and local leadership. Thus a chance to make political collaboration a renewable resource.
Sustainable Tahoe is proposing the creation of a Sustainable Tourism Pilot Program at the Tahoe UNR/SNU campus of the newly merged university. The program would leverage the expertise of the public funded Consultant Team to guide public funded SNU/UNR Tahoe-based students on how to test, apply and accelerate the adoption of new sustainable hosting protocols. Many of the RFP tasks could become student assignments, for example: analyzing visitor data points and then assessing, as well as defining visitor hosting protocol and those activities conducive to sustaining Lake Tahoe. In this way the 'Shared Vision Roadmap' is co-created by the generation inheriting the long term results.
The Sustainable Travel Pilot Program could then evolve into a Sustainable Tourism Certification or Masters Degree. These students then become the ongoing dedicated team to co-design, deliver and implement the desires of a Responsible Travel Roadmap. Students in this learn-by-doing course would now have a degree, resume and field experience leading to new careers that ensure the roadmap becomes a reality. Potential job positions might be 'Chamber of Stewardship' leader , 'Biodiversity Officer', 'Responsible Travel Manager'.
A climate emergency requires education innovation. This means rethinking the timeline between entering college and entering the workforce. Our country was built on apprenticeship and in some areas a field experience that prepares a person more than a degree. But, what if you could have both in the same amount of time it would take to acquire one? And now that we can self-educate online, why accrue lifelong debt sitting in a classroom? The rare and precious opportunity here is a classroom sitting in a fragile watershed, overwhelmed by tourists still responding to a 20th century hosting strategy that desperately needs a transformation. In 2007, Lake Tahoe scored a C- in the National Geographic 'Destination Scorecard' of the Top 100 world destinations and to date, it has not really improved.
Applied Learning or Community Based Learning courses are now being offered at Evergreen State College, in Washington and Barstow Community College in California. UC Davis classes are held in the lab of the lake and have environmental courses ready to drop into a Sustainable Tourism Major. SNU already has Resort Management and Business Management majors, but it is hard to imagine a Tahoe economy without an "eco-onomy" first.
Sustainable Tourism is a growing major offered in universities around the world, which is redefining tourism roles in destinations by creating new sustainability career paths. Another advantage is other colleges in the watershed could be connected, working together to learn and APPLY sustainable strategies of the Shared Vision roadmap in the Tahoe Truckee watershed within all the gateways, counties, 2 states and communities that share this water.
Students with fresh minds ready to learn and create a sustainable visitor menu and hosting protocol that makes it "Cool to Care" will not hesitate to look around and leverage the wealth of insight gained in decades of consultant driven public engagement events to support a Sustainable Tourism menu, if 'political collaboration can become a renewable resource'.
As a world class destination, we all, locals and business, have a responsibility to lead-by-example for the lake, wildlife, locals and visitors. The world is watching to see if Tahoe will indeed embrace and implement this 'responsible travel' mission... even after the consultants have left.
