A group of travel brands and representative organizations have come together to urge the industry to declare a climate emergency.
Tourism Declares, started by Much Better Adventures (MBA) and sustainable tourism writer and consultant Jeremy Smith, encourages companies to sign up and commit to reducing emissions in line with advice from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The IPCC says the world needs to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030.
Alex Narracott, co-founder and CEO of MBA, says the original plan was to launch last year when a tranche of other sectors were making declarations, but that it wanted to involve more of the industry through setting up the Tourism Declares initiative.
“If not now, when? Recent events, such as the fires in the Amazon and Australia, have only helped to highlight the urgency of the situation we face," he says.
"We need a bold, unified and immediate response. Acknowledging the problem publicly is the first step to doing something about it, and the tourism industry has been very slow to respond so far. My hope is that this provides the vehicle for the conversation to shift gears.”
Signatories, which so far include Responsible Travel, Exodus Travels and venture capital firm Rippl, have all committed to five actions including developing a climate emergency plan and cutting emissions.
Narracott adds: “The aim here is for public transparency to play the key role in holding companies accountable. After declaring we ask signatories to share their Climate Emergency Plan within 12 months of declaring.
“They are asked to be transparent on targets and their progress towards them. The hope is that this will ensure a good level of self-regulation within the network, and leave companies at risk of being called out if they are seen to be greenwashing.”
The launch of the initiative comes at the same time as a call for “carbon labelling” from Responsible Travel boss Justin Francis.
He believes consumers need data to help them make informed travel decisions and says an industry-wide carbon-labelling standard is a way forward.
Responsible Travel commissioned a report from academics Professor Stefan Gössling, of Lund University and Dr. Ya-Yen Sun of the University of Queensland, which measures the carbon impact of a complete holiday including food, accommodation and transport.
Francis says: “We know we have to fly less, but that's not the only significant contributor to the carbon emissions of your holiday. Your food is a significant, and sometimes the single biggest source of CO2 emissions from your holiday.
“To get to net zero carbon 2050 we'll need to fly less and change what we eat. This is a small pilot study, but it starts that conversation.”
While the travel and tourism industry has been called out for acting in a fragmented way in the past, MBA’s Narracott says that a single initiative is unlikely to be the solution.
“This declaration is about individual companies and organizations taking responsibility for their actions and developing action plans that fit their context. If we all did that, shared best practices and collaborated we'd make big strides quite quickly.”
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One question that remains is whether initiatives can be sustained and meaningful.
Prior to the global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, climate change and travel's impact on the environment was also on the agenda with a number of companies introducing initiatives, many of which were abandoned.
Narracott feels there is a “far greater sense of urgency that runs deeper and wider through society and business” this time.
“I think the language reflects that - we didn't have governments declaring an emergency 10 years ago either. With the IPCC reporting we have until 2030 to make 55% cuts in emissions vs 2017 levels, it creates the kind of shorter-term time frame that helps to focus minds.
"We can achieve a lot when we have a hard deadline in front of us, and five- to 10-year horizons typically work well for political and capital markets too.”