Lisa Scriven is best known for her expertise in sustainable tourism certification standards, capacity building, and operational implementation. She has over 15 years of related experience throughout southern and East Africa where she seeks locally appropriate solutions to sustainable development challenges through the tourism sector, particularly as these seek to bring real value, benefit, and empowerment to the people in the destination, while also ensuring the responsible use of natural resources, and a rewarding experience for the traveller.
Within this context, Lisa has worked with approximately 200 tourism businesses to align their operations with a broader vision for better destinations, including responsible waste management. She has published related articles and support tools for municipal and provincial tourism authorities, as well as not-for-profit organisations. By focusing on sharing innovative solutions and communicating about what works and what doesn’t, Lisa believes the tourism sector is uniquely positioned to play a key role in effecting change for cleaner, healthier places for people to live and to visit.
She is the co-founder of the specialised Windhoek-based sustainable business consultancy, Utopia Consulting (and its Ticket2Utopia project), is an Associate Member of the non-profit organisation Better Tourism Africa, and has been a member of the Sustainable Tourism Certification Alliance Africa since its inception – most recently as Chairperson of its working group on Standards and Best Practice. In 2017, Lisa was also invited to join the Accreditation Panel of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and is currently its only representative from Africa. She is happy to call Windhoek, Namibia “home” and to support the initiatives that have been developed here, such as the Recycle Namibia Forum.