The project for European Co-operation to achieve Sustainable Environmental Regional development through Tourism (ECOSERT) aims to prepare and initiate common working methods and on-the-ground actions to ensure sustainable environmental management of natural and cultural resources through tourism planning at regional or sub-regional level.

The ECOSERT project aims, furthermore, to improve environmentally degraded and economically isolated and depressed regions by putting into place co-ordinated, cross-sectoral environmental and tourism strategies under a common methodology and new implementation frameworks for both intra-regional and inter-regional co-operation. These are then expected to initiate local ecotourism and cultural tourism actions in areas suffering from obsolescent land uses, spatial imbalances in economic activity and unemployment.

At the heart of the ECOSERT project is the development and application of a common methodology for the preparation of a Regional Environmental Sustainable Tourism Plan (RESTP) in the three partner regions of Magnesia/Greece, Dee Estuary/UK and Avellino/Italy, as an innovative European tool of planning for sustainable tourism with environmental management.