Aims
Visit Finland wants to support the country to become a leader in sustainable tourism. They aim to lead and align climate action across tourism stakeholders in Finland by a) delivering a Climate Action Plan (CAP) that strengthens Finland’s position as a leader in climate action and b) by developing and promoting low-carbon modes of transport into and around Finland to support the sustainable growth of the tourism sector.
Background
Visit Finland and 60 other Finnish tourism companies and regions, signed the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism in June 2022. Finland has the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2035, ahead of the Glasgow Declaration target of 2050. To date, they have created a national Sustainable Travel Finland (STF) programme as a tool for achieving the sustainable development goals and climate goals. The STF recognises the importance and use of national sustainable tourism indicators and related data collection and uses a national sustainable development monitoring system to support decision-making.
As a signatory of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism, Visit Finland is committed to deliver the CAP within 12 months of signing, and reporting publicly both progress against interim and long-term targets, as well as the actions being taken, at least annually. The goal of the CAP is to provide tourism businesses, tourism destinations and Visit Finland a pathway to systematically reduce emissions caused by the tourism industry; a roadmap to decarbonise tourism sector.
Sustainability is at the core of Visit Finland strategy. This strategic vision provides the base for their CAP, alongside incorporating values from Visit Finland’s national sustainable tourism development programme ‘Sustainable Travel Finland’ and CO2 calculator specifically built for tourism businesses. In addition, Visit Finland intends to motivate other Finnish tourism stakeholders to become Glasgow Declaration signatories as per Finland’s national tourism strategy. Finally, the CAP should build a sense of community among tourism stakeholders taking climate action, to concretise the significance and importance of decarbonisation measures, to facilitate the creation of low-carbon travel chains and motivate more tourism stakeholders to participate in climate action.
Project activities
We will support Visit Finland on three strands of work:-
Refining Visit Finland’s 2023 CAP – The first CAP is a simpler plan, with more focus on current state, currently available actions and short-term targets. We will gather data, sense-check and refine it against a series of benchmarks.
Transport mapping – We will map out and present land and waterway accessibility to Finland from Visit Finland’s main markets (Germany, Sweden, UK), as well as selected active or subsidized markets (Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland). The idea is to map out alternative accessibility from these destinations, including (and combining) rail, ferry and bus connections.
Develop and launch Visit Finland’s 2024 CAP – The second CAP will focus more on future plans; identifying decarbonisation measures in value and supply chains and developing work to reach long-term targets. We will deliver the 2024 CAP using our own Adaptive Climate Action Planning Process, continually developed and refined through our previous CAP work. Its three stages combine one-to-one interviews, group workshops and ongoing feedback mechanisms. Work involves three stages; mapping, prioritisation and actions.
Following the CAP’s creation, we will support Visit Finland with webinars, presentations and workshops to engage industry and international audiences and we will contribute to an annual Finnish sustainability conference for the tourism and wider business sector.