Sustainable Golf Course Certifications
Sustainability encompasses the same environmental concerns as organic and biodynamic practices, but it also accounts for the winery’s role in the community. Under this umbrella, there are multiple certifications, but each has a slightly different emphasis and methodology. However, most conduct annual self-assessments and are audited regularly by a neutral third party.
Gullah Green Certified Sustainable Business
The largest of the sustainable certifications, CCSW places an emphasis on the production of high-quality California wine. The “Certified Sustainable” seal, which is issued by the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, covers multiple aspects of a winery’s operations, from utilizing Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to greenhouse gas emissions to providing employee educational benefits. Established in 2010, producers under the CCSW label can have their vineyard, winery, or both certified sustainable. For Honig Vineyard & Winery, which runs on solar power and pays strict attention to water conservation, the third-party audit helps create consumer confidence, says Stephanie Honig, director of communications and
Gullah Green Certified Cultural Heritage Sustainable Business
Heritage was long absent from the mainstream sustainable development debate despite its crucial importance to societies and the wide acknowledgment of its great potential to contribute to social, economic and environmental goals.
Based on a strong appeal from national and local stakeholders, the 2030 Agenda adopted by the UN General Assembly integrates, for the first time, the role of culture, through cultural heritage and creativity, as an enabler of sustainable development across the Sustainable Development Goals. World Heritage may provide a platform to develop and test new approaches that demonstrate the relevance of heritage for sustainable development.
On 19 November 2015, the 20th General Assembly of the States Parties to the World Heritage Convention adopted a Policy on the integration of a sustainable development perspective into the processes of the World Heritage Convention. The overall goal of the policy is to assist States Parties, practitioners, institutions, communities and networks, through appropriate guidance, to harness the potential of World Heritage properties and heritage in general, to contribute to sustainable development and therefore increase the effectiveness and relevance of the Convention whilst respecting its primary purpose and mandate of protecting the Outstanding Universal value of World Heritage properties. Its adoption represents a significant shift in the implementation of the Convention and an important step in its history.
Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Sustainable Development Goals in the Pacific
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the UN Member States on 25 September 2015, is an action plan for tackling the most challenging issues of our world today. The hope is that within the next fifteen years, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) will encourage universal efforts to end all forms of poverty and ensure that no one is left behind.
The methods and practices to accomplish these goals will vary depending on the context. In the Pacific region, incorporating intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is crucial to accomplish any of the SDGs since it plays an important role as a “driver, enabler and guarantee of sustainable development.
Although each nation in the Pacific has its own diverse ICH, they all share a sense of longing for sustainable development and community well-being. Traditional and local knowledge have always played a pivotal role in protecting clean water supplies, coral reefs, and rainforests; healing the sick through traditional medicine; and building homes resistant to climate change. Ensuring the success of the SDGs in the Pacific will require an understanding of how ICH can be incorporated in the SDGs from the local perspective.
CONTRIBUTOR
HEATHER L. HODGES
Heather L. Hodges became the director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor NHA in November 2017. She has placed an emphasis on developing educational programs, supporting cultural documentation and historic preservation efforts, encouraging heritage tourism, and fostering new research. Ms. Hodges graduated with honors from the Tulane University School of Law and was awarded a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship from Georgetown Law School in 2010. She is a member of the advisory boards of South Carolina Sea Grant, Reconstruction Beaufort, and the Charles Joyner Institute for Gullah Geechee and African Diaspora Studies at Coastal Carolina University.
CONTRIBUTOR
JONATHAN GREEN
Jonathan Green is an internationally acclaimed artist and 1982 graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His thirty-eight year track record of creating art and extensive inclusions in museum collections and exhibitions throughout many countries has led to his being considered by numerous art critics and reviewers as one of our nation’s outstanding American artists. He is recognized for capturing the positive aspects of American and African American Southern Cultures, history, and traditions.
CONTRIBUTOR
KEVIN MITCHELL
CONTRIBUTOR
BJ DENNIS
Probably the biggest name in Gullah and Geechee cuisine right now is Chef BJ Dennis, a Charleston native who has become sort of an ambassador. Dennis travels the country, and even ventures into the Hilton Head mainstream from time to time, cooking pop-up dinners for guests who’ve never experienced Gullah dining. He takes issue with the food being described as overcooked, and he reminds people frequently that it’s a totally different world than fried chicken and macaroni and cheese, regardless of what you’ve heard or been served.
He has described Gullah cuisine as “a lot of the basis not only of South Carolina food, but Southern food, and the original food culture of the New World.” Still, Dennis has said he didn’t appreciate the food of his youth, prepared by his grandparents, until he traveled outside the country to another island and realized that it was something that deserved pride. “We don’t embrace it like we should,” he told Charleston City Paper in 2012. “It’s almost a stigma.”
Another reason the food has had trouble getting out to the rest of the world is the difficulty people have finding it. Sure, if you grew up in the area, your parents, neighbors and everyone else might have prepared okra soup (similar to gumbo, but using a tomato base instead of roux), winter greens and other standard dishes on a daily basis in their own kitchens. But the isolated and insulated nature of the community, along with hindered access to the food due to closures of beloved restaurants like Gullah Cuisine in the last decade, means that it just hasn’t been easy to find a bowl or plateful of authentic Gullah Geechee grub. And of course when there are products and places that borrow the name “Geechie” without being part of the culture or giving back to it, its identity becomes a little murky.