“Throwing bricks is always easier than using them for building” says Carbon Consultancy Boss
Thursday, 02 Jul, 2009
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Earlier this week Justin Francis, boss of Responsible Travel, made some major statements about his view that global sustainable criteria could not work. Now Hugo Kimber of the Carbon Consultancy retorts:
" Justin Francis makes some interesting points in his critique of “certification” but interestingly provides very little by way of concrete alternative suggestions and confuses the very different approaches offered by eco-labelling, indexing, certification and industry driven sustainability criteria.
First let’s look at the difference between certification, indexing and global sustainable tourism criteria – GSTC. The certification that Francis criticizes is provided primarily to hotels and is an in-depth process for hotels, using external experts to drive greater sustainability. True this has delivered external assessment of less than 1% of global hotel stock to date. This failure to attract hotels has much to do with the predominantly NGO/Regional driven supply side driven approaches to sustainability that have been a primary focus for the industry. The investment in certification whether Green Globe or any of the other hundreds of national and regional schemes needs to be justified by increased demand in addition to cost saving and a positive global impact. The adoption pool that is based upon good intentions and a desire to do the right thing is saturated. Without regulation, demand side stimulus is the only driver that will deliver results and achieve widespread industry engagement.
The launch of an index approach by Green Globe learns from these challenges and recognises that mass engagement will be delivered by simpler processes that do not discriminate on the basis of cost and allow all travel and tourism industry companies to learn about and improve performance – not just hotels – and to actually engage industry stakeholders irrespective of size, type and location. Critically the index works to deliver demand side momentum to sustainability, without it sustainability engagement risks being confined to a small percentage of the global industry, stimulated only by dedicated practitioners.
We already have the proof that consumers want more information on sustainability to inform their choices to reward sustainable suppliers. The index provides this by using common standards and allowing those with a minimum level of attainment to be recognised by consumers as addressing issues as opposed to doing nothing. Index users can compare their performance with global and national users both on a pan industry and sector basis, showing them how well their performance compares and identifying areas for improvement.
This is not eco-labelling, an approach that has been tried and has failed previously. Furthermore eco-labelling with its connotations of deprivation and low quality is ill suited to the hospitality industry. If by eco-labelling we mean something similar to the Carbon Trust labelling of Walkers Crisps it won’t happen due to complex global issues involved, as Francis highlights, as well as the cost and administration involved with no guarantee that it will deliver increased sustainability any more than salt/fat content labelling has dramatically altered food consumption. Consumption trends are supported by education and information, the very type of delivery that indexing and certification are a part of.
The value of certification whether by Green Globe, Green Seal or other agencies is in its ability to support businesses to maximise sustainability performance not create a global multi labelling system. The regional understanding of certifiers helps to ensure regional relevance whilst using common assessment metrics to establish performance. Francis singles out Green Globe for reasons that are not clear, but as he does so it is worth noting that the work of Green Globe is highly collaborative and the organisation, which was set up to support industry sustainability, is not seeking to be a global labelling system, but an umbrella brand under which multiple practitioners and regional/national programmes can co-exist, work together and collaborate to deliver increased sustainability.
Finally to the GSTC which Francis dismisses as an approach. The GSTC is not perfect, but it is notably driven by a wide variety of industry organizations and companies, not as previously a purely NGO approach. Its imperfection at this early stage does not invalidate the idea of a global industry initiative and as ever it is easy to find fault, where a collaborative and supportive approach might be more difficult, but will yield better long-term results. Interesting too that Travelife, who Francis cites as a good example of a hotel based programme support GSTC. Like carbon methodology we can all have an informed argument about measurement methodology, but not at the expense of action to move forward to mass industry engagement.
The real issue here is that programmes to support sustainability must take into account the ability and willingness of the majority to engage. This willingness will be supported by strong demand side drivers and processes that begin with simple common data point submissions, indexing and then build to deliver regional and national subsets that reflect the say – the difference in the challenges faced in Peru and Switzerland. Certification will continue to be important as it helps to take engaged companies from an early stage/intermediate to advanced level of sustainability performance. Simply saying that because we are not at this level of sophistication now invalidates any interim approach, is the attitude that has resulted in low engagement to date as sustainability experts argue in the ditch on issues that mean very little to the industry at large. We have seen this in the carbon emissions arena, lets not make the same mistake across the wider sustainability challenge faced by the industry.
PS: what is the real difference between an eco label as recently derided by Justin Francis and the launch by Justin’s company of Responsible Hotels of the World a new grouping of eco friendly hotels that "have been carefully screened for their commitment". The consumer may be confused
and any clarfication would be good.
and any clarfication would be good.
Hugo Kimber
Valere
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