Here comes the sun… in Belgium

SUN – Strong Universal Network – says it will deliver on SDG’s and Climate Targets.

New Travel & Tourism sustainability program, SUN, has announced that its first SUN-ARK Centre will be opened in the Belgium National Park, Hoge Kempen in Limburg in the first quarter of 2016.

Ignace Schops, Director of the National Park and President of Europarc Federation together with Professor Geoffrey Lipman, Curator of SUN and President of ICTP made the announcement in Paris, at COP21

SUN-ARKs are prefabricated 20×12 metre, solar powered buildings, shipped in containers, easily assembled and designed to serve as community focused learning, teaching and innovation centres.

They operate on or off grid and once in place, become an instant and constant power source. Their primary purpose in Belgium will be the integration of travel & tourism benefits and impacts into post 2015 community lifestyles: the network will also serve as a support system for the travel sector during natural and man made emergencies.

SUN-ARKs will be manned by trained graduate researchers, who will track sustainable development goal and climate performance, as well as identifying replicable adaptation models and funding sources, from around an expanding global network.

The program was inspired by the late Maurice Strong, Sustainable Development visionary – Secretary General of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and its Agenda 21 implementation framework and a believer in ‘Travelism’ (Travel & Tourism) as a Green Growth agent for the global economy, nations and local communities .

It aims to strengthen community resilience to the challenge of Climate Change and deliver Sustainable Development, through a new Green Growth framework – profiling renewable energy, cloud communications, big data econometrics & community driven, nature and technology based solutions.

Ignace Schops a Goldman Award winner said that the first SUN-ARK, will also be closely linked to the science project of the National Park and Hasselt University, designed to measure Climate Change Impacts and identify smart, nature based, responses. National Parks and the communities linked to them are particularly vulnerable to climate impacts and the SUN program will bring new, much needed, support, from the global to local level.

Professor Lipman said "travellers and the infrastructure they rely on, will be an important part of the global change advanced by the Paris COP 21 Climate Summit, as well as recent SDG and Development Financing Summits.  SUN will help communities to engage public, private, academic and civil society partners in market responsive, inclusionary, long term change" 

Further information: http://www.thesunprogram.com/

Valere Tjolle

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