World Travel Market Boss Trumpets Green Tourism Cause to Tourism Ministers
Sunday, 16 Nov, 2009
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Fiona Jeffrey Chairman of WTM asks World Tourism Ministers to take the last chance before Copenhagen to address the issues “Can you imagine a world where we lose countries?”
The Managing Director of the World Travel Market, Fiona Jeffrey, made an impassioned plea to a packed UNWTO Tourism Ministers Summit to green up their act.
Over 100 tourism ministers and senior aides heard the boss of one of the world’s major tourism events champion the cause of sustainable tourism and bring attention to the imminent dangers of climate change.
Fiona Jeffrey has instituted both Responsible Tourism Day at the World Travel Market and a number of other sustainable tourism-related events and initiatives.
The full text of her speech:
Fiona Jeffries Speech Ministers’ Summit
“Dr Rifai, Ministers, distinguished guests, friends and colleagues, a very warm welcome to World Travel Market and the third Ministers’ Summit, hosted by World Travel Market.
I’d first like to thank our partners who’ve played an important part in the development of the Ministers Summit this year and who have helped make it the most successful. These include Sky News, National Geographic and UNTV as well as our leading sector representatives from PATA, CTO, WTTC and from the commercial sector, Thomas Cook.
I hope you’ll allow me the next few minutes to paint a graphic picture for you.
Can you imagine a world where we lose countries?
Where they completely disappear from our view? Lost for ever? Where communities see their country taken away from them? Where a much loved tourist destination, a tranquil and breathtaking paradise of glittering sands and blue turquoise seas is lost to travellers all over the world who come to enjoy its exquisite offering?
Far fetched? Over the top, completely impossible, you might think?
And yet this is the reality that the travel and tourism industry – and indeed governments – face, as yet more and more scientific documentation continues to be published. Of course there are sceptics who just as strongly reject the whole idea of climate change – but they’re now becoming a minority.
The Maldives is one such country where nature, it’s believed, is giving us a sign of the catastrophe to come.
When the tsunami struck in 2004, the damage was disastrous. Two thirds of the country disappeared momentarily into the Indian Ocean, and when the sea withdrew, it took 62 percent of the country’s Gross National Product with it.
Electricity, communications and freshwater supplies on many islands were destroyed by the saltwater and not until two years later did the country totally recover with the help of the UN and international aid organisations.
Perhaps this was a taste of what the 300,000 citizens of the Maldives can expect when global warming becomes reality and makes the world’s seas rise by as much as one metre within the next century – yes, that’s the damning forecast by the latest scientific studies.
Almost 700.000 tourists from Europe, Japan, China and Australia visit the Maldives every year. It’s a vital source of income for the Maldives as is tuna fishing, though this too is fast diminishing as sadly fish stocks begin to dwindle.
Another country under threat is Antartica and here again, the evidence is irrefutable.
So what does all this mean to us, to the travel and tourism industry?
The Global Humanitarian Forum estimates that climate change accounts for over 300,000 deaths each year already, the equivalent of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami every year. A report commissioned by University College London and the Lancet has concluded that climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century and that the poor will be the worst affected.
As in the Maldives, climate change impacts on the world’s poor in the developing world and yet tourism can offer opportunities for people to engage in a global industry that offers jobs, investment and prosperity.
International travel and tourism is beginning to take responsibility and making real efforts to improve its sustainability, not only for our sakes but that of future generations.
This is born out, I’m pleased to say, by the success of WTM World Responsible Tourism Day, in association with the UNWTO and taking place tomorrow here at World Travel Market with a comprehensive programme of events. On Thursday we also have a one-day conference when some of the world’s leading responsible tourism experts will demonstrate how a green agenda can and is proving to help profitability.
Hundreds of travel companies, destinations and individuals are participating in WTM World Responsible Tourism Day. It’s an ambitious, universal movement to inspire and educate others within the industry to commit to a long term sustainability policy. I commend to you the human interest stories in Spotlight, WTM World Responsible Tourism Day’s own magazine, which, for example, charts some of the outstanding work taking place throughout the world.
But many challenges remain, not least the urgent need to identify a global mechanism which is both cheap and efficient to operate and can help airlines adapt and reduce carbon emissions, flying more fuel efficient planes and improving operating procedures and load factors.
That’s why this year’s UNWTO Ministers’ Summit here at World Travel Market is so vital.
It’s a last chance to discuss these critical issues and to help governments prepare to address the pressing challenges of climate change and its disastrous affects on travel and tourism at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen next month.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the eyes of the industry – and the world – will be waiting with baited breath to see the outcome.
Failure is not an option but, from all that I have read and know, the outcome at this moment, is far from certain.
Paradise countries like the Maldives could indeed be lost for ever.
So I do hope that the time spent here today at the UNWTO Ministers Summit is well spent, because there is little doubt, that time, is running out.
May I wish you all a stimulating and above all productive debate.
Thank you
Valere
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