Camping tourism on Fruska Gora – the project realized with support of the Netherlands Embassy through the Program MATRA KNIP
Camping Association of Serbia and Balkan Youth Association have realized the project “Camping tourism – Guideline for Sustainable Development of NP Fruska Gora” which has been financially supported by the Netherlands Embassy through the Matra program.
The goal of the project “Camping tourism – Guideline for Sustainable Development of NP Fruska Gora” is the promotion of economic development in accordance with the principles of environmental protection in municipalities that partly spread on the territory of the National Park Fruska Gora. Those municipalities are: Beocin, Sremski Karlovci, Indjija, Sremska Mitrovica, Irig, Sid, Backa Palanka, Ruma and Petrovaradin. Connecting the economic development and environmental protection is inevitable because a great part of Fruska Gora is urbanized and it is necessary to search for the model of the future actions in order to ensure that the pressure of man kind leaves as few as possible negative consequences to the mountain. Another important goal of this project is also improving the relationships of the local community with the sustainable exploitation of natural resources through establishing the cooperation between the local governments, the PE “National Park Fruska Gora”, the Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia, the non-government sector related to environmental protection and media. Only through coordinated cooperation of all the above-mentioned subjects, it is possible to achieve measurable results that will have an effect on the economic development of the local community as well as on the preservation of the environment in the national park. The purpose of this project is to raise awareness about the importance of the environmental protection and the causes of pollution, education on European standards in field of environmental protection, encouragement of the local entrepreneurs to start sustainable businesses that would connect camping tourism with renewable energy sources, proper waste management and principles of environmental protection in general. This project is directed to raising awareness of the local people about current problems on Fruska Gora and proposals of concrete measures to be taken in order to improve the future economic development that would be in accordance with environmental protection principles. One of the possible sustainable solutions is the development of eco camping.
Camping and caravanning tourism in Europe are highly developed, while this sector of tourism is still unaccustomed and underestimated in Serbia. The main reason of this perception of the camping tourism is the lack of information i.e. ignorance of the fact that camping tourism makes averagely 23% of total number of annual tourist visits in EU, which is almost a quarter of overall tourist turnover. By this project the Balkan Youth Association and the Camping Association of Serbia want to offer a new vision of local community development through the development of camps and parks in the region, relying solely on natural potentials of the existing environment.
Another fact that is always present during attempts to protect the environment is that the work on protection without the local community participation can never achieve the expected results. For this reason, the project “Camping tourism – Guideline for Sustainable Development of National Park Fruska Gora” promotes the idea that is acceptable for the local community as well as for the sector involved in the environmental protection.
