Prototype Guide for the Implementation of an Environmental Management System on Mountain Refuge Huts

An environmental management manual has been drafted based on the experience of the CRESTA project, coherent with the ISO 14000 standard. It is able to confront, efficiently and simultaneously, the management aspects, of most sorts of refuges, that interfere with the environment. The project took off following an agreement between Grivel Mont Blanc with the common objective of working together on projects promoting sustainable alpinism. Collaboration with managers of several refuges and their useful working knowledge was made possible due to an agreement between the Department of Commodity Sciences and the Association of Aosta Valley Refuge Managers (ASSO Rifugi).

The research has been prepared in Italian and English and French. Contacts are being made to promote the Manual and to distribute it; in the proto-type version form as well as the one specific to the Regina Margherita Refuge.  The Manual’s guidelines represent a series of criteria that will be used during future months in the expansion of the implementation of the Environmental Management System to Mountain Refuge Huts.

The research team intend that the knowledge acquired during the implementation of projects be used, as far as possible, in further experimental projects, on top of those already performed, in order to refine this instrument of environmental certification and ensure its future implementation in other specific contexts.

The Manual’s target audience are refuge managers and their representative bodies, from Mountain Community Councils to the Clubs formed by mountain enthusiasts. Secondly, Management Consultancies and certification bodies working in the environmental field could also find it very interesting.