We’re the first NGO to sign up to Tourism Declares, an initiative that supports tourism businesses, organisations and individuals in declaring a climate emergency and taking purposeful action to reduce their carbon emissions.
Accelerating the transition to a low carbon tourism economy should be an essential part of business and destination recovery efforts post COVID-19, with the opportunity to invest in green infrastructure and get ahead of a consumer shift in attitudes and travel behaviour.
Like all signatories, we have committed to the following five actions:
- Develop a ‘Climate Emergency Plan’ within the next 12 months, which sets out our intentions to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade.
- Share an initial public declaration of our ‘Climate Emergency Plan’, and update on progress each year.
- Accept current IPCC advice stating the need to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030 in order to keep the planet within 1.5 degrees of warming. We’ll ensure our ‘Climate Emergency Plan’ represents actions designed to achieve this as a minimum, through delivering transparent, measurable and increasing reductions in the total carbon emissions arising from our operations.
- Encourage our partners and supporters to make the same declaration; sharing best practice amongst peers; and actively participate in the Tourism Declares community
- Advocate for change. We recognise the need for system change across the industry.
Our Climate Emergency Plan will ensure our carbon emissions, predominantly linked to global travel and our work environment, will reduce through smart choices going forward. We will measure our annual improvements using 2019 emissions as a baseline.
Although the Travel Foundation’s carbon emissions may be relatively small compared with other organisations in the travel and tourism sector, our influence is much greater. For many years we have promoted energy efficiency and a low-carbon transition (for example, our current UN-led project “Transforming Tourism Value Chains” in Saint Lucia and Mauritius).
We intend to build on this experience and redouble our advocacy and thought leadership efforts, to support the Tourism Declares community and the wider travel and tourism sector.
For more information on Tourism Declares please visit www.tourismdeclares.com.