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GREENING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY THROUGH SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
Saturday, 06 Sep, 2009
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For its Annual Symposium 2009, the European Travel Commission (ETC) has been working with VisitSweden and the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) to provide a comprehensive overview of how tourism can play a leading role in the development of a sustainable global economy.
The joint Symposium on Tourism and Travel in the Green Economy, which is taking place on 14-15 September in Gothenburg, Sweden, has been convened as part of the UN’s Davos process on climate change to address how the going carbon neutral and development of sustainable consumption and production relates to the tourism sector in the run-up to this December`s Copenhagen Agreement.
With 175 of the 180 symposium places already taken, the Gothenburg event is sure to provide an important contribution both in support of ‘sealing the deal’ in Copenhagen and the longer road to a Green Economy.
Now the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the European Union Presidency and the European Commission have come on board, alongside symposium convenors and national governments and industry, to underline the importance of this symposium and the issues it addresses. Maud Olofsson, Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, will open the Symposium with Taleb Rifai and his team from UNWTO, Jean Claude Baumgarten from WTTC and ETC President Arthur Oberascher, followed by an impressive range of high-level and experienced sustainable tourism experts. They will be clarifying how their respective institutions and projects are greening the sector in order to make the necessary changes imposed by the climate change agenda and by the global economic crisis.
Luigi Cabrini, Director of Sustainable Tourism Development at UNWTO, has emphasized that the UN inter-agency statement ´The Green Economy: A Transformation to Address Multiple Crises` launched last August sets the right framework for discussing how the tourism sector can respond to the economic crisis while pursuing a sustainability agenda.
Franco Ianniello, Head of the Tourism Unit, Directorate General Enterprise and Industry at the European Commission, will provide a lunchtime address acknowledging the importance of the sustainable growth of tourism in Europe and globally. He will also highlight some of the measures which have been undertaken at European level with a view to supporting a sustainable and competitive tourism development.
Rob Franklin, ETC’s Executive Director, is making sure that National Tourism Organisations (NTOs) are fully informed of the prevailing problems and opportunities: “Climate change is a driver of sustainable development, and NTOs need to pay attention to global and European-level policies and programmes that will help them maintain and improve their market share.”
The Gothenburg Symposium will launch ETC’s own climate change and sustainable tourism knowledge networking strategy for NTOs. Gordon Sillence – the conference coordinator commissioned by ETC to develop the NTO knowledge network and symposium content – says that the Gothenburg process has brought together a lot of excellent information from the various presenters to start a common NTO knowledge base on climate change and sustainable tourism (see the DestiNet Sustainable Tourism Portal destinet.ew.eea.europa.eu).
“It is encouraging to see business and industry having agendas in common with governments in order to shift ‘business-as-usual’ into a greener gear. Participants will get to hear first-hand about the new methodologies, technologies and opportunities that now exist to make travel and tourism supply chain activities and tourism destinations more sustainable – and hence more competitive – in today`s fast-changing global market economy.”
For further information see the news section on www.etc-corporate.org or contact: Gordon Sillence ([email protected]) (00351 913315092)
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