Federico Solano described a new scheme called Tour Operators Promoting Sustainability, or TOPS, for both local Latin American tourism companies and those sending customers from the UK and other countries.

After bringing together travel companies that have made a commitment to sustainable practices, the Alliance hopes to launch a group-wide marketing campaign, creating one of the world’s first networks of green-certified operators.

Twelve UK holiday companies already have contracts with the Rainforest Alliance in place, committing them to using accommodation and cruise companies that operate in a sustainable way. These include The Adventure Company, Exodus, Explore, Hands Up Holidays and Imaginative Traveller. Federico said UK companies have been among the most supportive of the Alliance’s work, and that he hopes they will all sign up to the TOPS platform.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the new TOPS project progresses, and hope to see lots more of the Rainforest Alliance on the UK travel trade circuit. Perhaps a UK consumer travel show, featuring only Rainforest Alliance partners, could be something for the not-too-distant future…

I got chance to meet a Rainforest Alliance-certified operator just yesterday. Costa Rican Horizontes Tours, which specialises in nature tours, has been working alongside the Rainforest Alliance for several years. Rodolfo Alvarez explained how the company uses certified hotels as much as possible, and how it has introduced volunteering projects, home-stays and tree-planting options to help its customers interact more with nature and with Costa Rica’s people. I won two nights at a Costa Rican yoga retreat so I hope I may get chance to go and explore the country’s wildlife for myself sometime soon!

When I saw the photo, I thought surely this must be the smallest frog in the world?

Au contraire – it’s only the smallest species discovered in the OLD world .

They’ve found even smaller ones in Brazil and Cuba, though there seems to be some confusion over whether the Brazilian Gold Frog (Brachycephalus didactylus) or Cuba’s Monte Iberia Eleuth (Eleutherodactylus iberia) is the smallest.

Here are pictures of them both, anyhow:

The researchers are out in Borneo searching for the world’s lost amphibians as part of a campaign organized by Conservation International and IUCN’s Amphibians Specialist Group.

It’s worth checking out CI’s Search For the Lost Frogs page if you have a minute….

There’s a special photo group set up on Flickr for you to upload your own frog photos, and I’ve just uploaded a pic I took in Le Perinet rainforest in Madagascar…I’m hoping someone will identify it for me.

Its work in tourism ranges from training hotel staff on green technology, to helping them attain certificates of sustainability, to educating tourists on how they can minimise their own impact upon the environment while on holiday.

Its sustainable tourism programme began in Ecuador but it’s really been picking up pace, and has recently signed agreements with the  Guatemala tourist board, and CATA, a tourist board for the whole Central American region.

The Alliance’s Federico Salano tells me he’s seen interest in and take-up of sustainable tourism really surge in the last five years. Europeans are particularly ethically-conscious travellers, he adds.

“You simply cannot make business with European companies if you don’t have a sustainable tourism programme now,” he says. “Now it’s a reality more than a trend.”

There are several UK tour operators who currently work with the Rainforest Alliance, with more big names to come onboard soon. Signing an agreement with the Alliance means the operator commits to ensuring that half of the hotels and other businesses it works with have appropriate green certification.

It sounds like a fantastic programme, but I wonder if they could perhaps set the bar even higher. What’s to stop a tour operator dealing with the most gas-guzzling, tree-felling, water-polluting tourism businesses in the Americas for the other 50% of their business?

One thing’s for sure: the system of green accreditation and certification within the tourism industry needs a proper sort out. There are so many confusing acronyms out there – STCNA, CST, STEP and QTC to name a few – that you can’t see the wood for the trees, if you’ll excuse the pun.

Federico tells me that the Rainforest Alliance is teaming up with the UN and several other bodies to launch the Tourism Sustainability Council or TSC in April next year. It will be the ‘certifier for certifications’, “giving order to the myriad certifications and checklists around the world,” he says.

Great news, but I wish they’d come up with a snappier name!