Explore a curated collection of articles, reports, academic papers, and case studies that delve into the intersection of WWII heritage and sustainability. Whether you’re looking for research insights, best practices, or real-world examples of sustainable remembrance tourism, this page offers the tools and knowledge to support informed action.
Preserving the Past, Securing the Future project partners: LRE Foundation, mascontour GmbH, Juno Beach Centre, Fondazione Campus – with contributions from project participants, October 2026
The Sustainable Tourism Practices Handbook, developed through the Preserving the Past, Securing the Future (PPSF) project, provides practical guidance for integrating sustainability into the cultural heritage and remembrance tourism sector, with a particular focus on Second World War heritage sites. Drawing on sector research, needs and market analyses, case studies, and the shared experiences of sector professionals across Europe, the handbook addresses the environmental, socio-cultural, and economic dimensions of sustainability. It presents practical recommendations, step-by-step guidance, and implementation resources to support museums, memorials, and remembrance organisations in adopting more sustainable practices, including reducing environmental impacts, strengthening community engagement, improving accessibility, diversifying income sources, and enhancing visitor management. By highlighting successful initiatives and encouraging collaboration, knowledge exchange, and continuous improvement, the handbook aims to empower heritage organisations of different sizes and capacities to develop resilient sustainability strategies, safeguard cultural heritage, and promote responsible tourism while preserving the educational and commemorative value of remembrance sites for future generations.
Preserving the Past, Securing the Future (PPSF) project, mascontour GmbH (edited by LRE Foundation), August 2025
This research was done as part of the initial assessment report of the EU co-funded Preserving the Past, Securing the Future project. The aim was to establish the current situation of sustainability within the WWII remembrance and wider cultural heritage sector, in order to design the PPSF training programme for stakeholders in the sector and foster sustainability practices.
A series of questions connected to sustainability within your institution, to be discussed either in groups, as a workshop activity or reflected on individually. They help to assess what your institution has done so far in its efforts for sustainability, and highlight some potential next steps of what you can do to go further.
A simple worksheet to start tracking your site’s environmental footprint. This can be repeated monthly to track progress over time.
A checklist to be used during a walk-through of your site, enabling you to mark small changes that you can
implement now, as well as to note ideas for future upgrades.
This guide supports educators, tour guides, and programme developers in connecting historical education with contemporary global challenges. It includes discussion themes, activity ideas, and reflection questions aligned with UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) framework.
A baseline tracker to help you monitor energy, waste, visitor travel, and paper and printing on a monthly basis, and to make a reflection on one small improvement per month.
How to turn a site walk into an action list with priorities, from quick wins to future improvements.
A practical checklist designed for museums, memorials & interpretation centres to help organise and carry out more eco-responsible events.
A checklist to use for each event to make it measurable, allowing you to check the eco-responsible aspects of your event before, during and after and so improve every time.
This guide provides prompts and ideas to help remembrance institutions design
participatory, reflective, and intergenerational education activities. Use or adapt these
materials for school visits, youth workshops, or commemorative events.
This template helps remembrance institutions measure and communicate the
social value they create for visitors, communities, schools, volunteers, and society.
A useful template to help you set out your own sustainability goals and monitor them accordingly. The foundations of a sustainability strategy in a simple template.
A slightly more complex version of the ‘simple’ template to help you set out your own sustainability goals and monitor them accordingly, with additional concepts and measurements. The foundations of a sustainability strategy in a simple template.
A complementary document to the Sustainability Action Plan templates detailing how to complete the template.
An individual or group activity to assess the accessibility of your site. Walk the site through the lens of on of the chosen six visitor profiles and document barriers across the
journey.
An individual or group activity to assess the inclusivity of your site through various questions and reflections.
An individual or group activity to look at who is your community – who does your organisation work with? Who could you work with? What are the benefits of these cooperations/potential cooperations?
An individual activity to help you understand who is in your procurement chain and where the value goes.
A template to help you plan the key activities, partnerships, valuesand more of your business/organisaton.
A second version of the template which can be exported to Word can be found here
A selection of communication materials featuring useful information and insights from the PPSF project. These can be shared on your own communication channels to help raise awareness to the resources available in this project and encourage others in the sector to act on their sustainability too.
Do you have a study, report, case study, or article on sustainability in WWII heritage? Share your insights and help expand the conversation on responsible remembrance tourism. Submit your work and contribute to a growing resource for professionals in the sector.
