A new climate for tourism

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Will travel and tourism miss out on this massive green growth opportunity

We’ve all known it for long enough – at least since the Gothenburg Symposium, COP15 in Copenhagen and the Davos summit on tourism and climate change – the tourism industry has been aware of the potential damage that climate change could wreak – AND the methods and potential for mitigation and adaptation. In effect changing what we do and how we do it to avoid the worst effects and take advantage of the forecasts.

Lengthy reports have been written and broadcasted forecasting disappearing island destinations, snowless ski resorts, blisteringly-hot Mediterranean holiday zones, dramatically-higher transportation costs, economies that are so overburdened with the cost of climate change that there’s nothing left over for travel, exhausted food and water resources, freak storms that ruin local tourism for years the list goes on and on while our industry squabbles about the cost of it all. Or, more frighteningly, hides under a marketing plan while denying that any of it is going to happen.

Each IPCC report has been worded more strongly than the last and you can almost hear the time bomb ticking as you opened this latest one yesterday.

And whilst we do little, our stake gets bigger, report after report, like a bunch of gamblers doubling up and hoping it will all go away but knowing it won’t.

Ironically, whilst we delay action the costs of mitigation and adaptation increase exponentially and the bright and passionate minds that should be engaged on delivering exciting solutions are frustrated and frozen by lack of general support.

Ironically too, the massive opportunities that are available now atrophy as we neither recognize them or take advantage of them.

And climate change, for tourism, is currently not only an unheeded threat but also a massive opportunity.

The fact is that the travel and tourism industry could lead the world into a green, sustainable future.

In much the same way that Roosevelt’s New Deal showed the way out of the Depression, green, managed-impact tourism can create millions more good jobs, better, more liveable destinations, training and education opportunities, enormous local sustainable profits, re-envigorated SMEs, cultural, social and environmental honouring and stewarding.

And, possibly most important of all, green tourism can deliver a sense of optimism, well-being and appreciation of our common heritage where little existed before.

Maybe this latest Climate Change Report will be the call to action that the travel and tourism industry needs. A new climate change and tourism summit will be called and lead to concerted and fulfilling action.

Valere Tjolle

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