As the 2019 Are Alpine Skiing World Championships end, Italy’s Cortina d’Ampezzo has announced that the next Championships in 2021 which they’re hosting will have a focus on renewable energy and sustainable development. 

Their aim is to catapulting this much-loved Dolomite ski destination into the future while safeguarding the alpine ecosystem.

To that end the Cortina Charter has created through a collaboration between the Ministry of the Environment, the Municipality of Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Veneto Region, the UNESCO Dolomites Foundation and sprecozero.net (zero waste) along with other stake holders to promote the creation of an innovative development model to encourage sustainable alpine tourism ahead of the 2021  Championships.

A number of initiatives have already been launched, designed to engage citizens and local stakeholders and to communicate to the industry as a whole, the potential of a model that can be replicated in all alpine tourist destinations.

These initiatives include a focus on involving young people in Cortina as much as possible and creating a young team with a view of the future that reflects the newer generations of adults today.

Preserving the environment both on a local scale and in a wider context will be a key argument when decisions are made. Using sustainable / renewable sources of energy, minimum impact on the environment will be a key consideration.

For example Cortina is hoping to use only electrical modes of transportation of materials and people. Both the infrastructure projects leading up to the event and the event itself will seek to minimise its ecological footprint.

Finally in terms of innovation and technology – the resort wants to use new technologies, both to achieve the its sustainability goals and to showcase the very latest technologies available to ski areas.