Sustainability is using resources in a way and at a rate that enables the current generation to meet their needs and desires without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and desires. It is all about balance of environmental, economic and social benefit. Tourism industry has high reliance on natural and cultural assets and is vulnerable to climate change impacts. This paper introduces a holistic approach to environmental management and carbon emission reduction with practical application in the tourism industry by EarthCheck program. The approach which includes quantitative benchmarking and qualitative assessment is well implemented in a broad industry scale to help tourism business start their sustainable journey.

Urban forest walkways provide accessible forest recreation opportunities within cities, but little is known about how different walkway landscape environments are associated with older adults’ perceived psychological restoration. This study examined three representative urban forest walkways in Fuzhou, China, by integrating image-based landscape classification with photo-elicitation questionnaires. A total of 1188 field photographs were collected, of which 963 valid images were used for landscape analysis. A SegNet-based semantic segmentation model was used to extract major landscape elements, and the images were subsequently classified into four landscape environment types. Questionnaire data were obtained from 415 older walkway users, generating 4980 respondent–image evaluation records. The SegNet model achieved a mean IoU of 79.4%. The high-naturalness canopy-immersive type received the highest scores for tranquillity, refuge, naturalness, landscape preference, and perceived psychological restoration, whereas the semi-open viewing-platform type showed the highest spaciousness and prospect scores. Landscape preference was positively associated with perceived psychological restoration in the mixed-effects model and partially mediated the associations between selected perceived landscape attributes and perceived psychological restoration. These findings suggest that age-friendly urban forest walkway design should maintain canopy immersion, provide semi-open viewing nodes, improve resting and interaction spaces, and refine forest-edge urban-interface sections.

Across 46 EU Framework projects, ecological technology performance depended on context and configuration. Engineered support could improve outcomes but added demands; transferability rests on comparable evidence and defined operating envelopes.