The “Good Tourism” Podcast #1: Geoffrey Lipman & the existential threat

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[UPDATE Novem­ber 8, 2017: The Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute for Peace through Tour­ism has chosen five people from the world of travel & tour­ism to hon­our as “Glob­al Ambas­sad­ors of Peace Through Tour­ism”, includ­ing Prof Lip­man. Upon accept­ing the award, Prof Lip­man said: “I have been inspired for 25 years by Maurice Strong and the Award is a testi­mony to his vis­ion, which was a major factor in the evol­u­tion of the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals and the Par­is Cli­mate Accords. It also drove my actions in the first dec­ade as Pres­id­ent of World Travel & Tour­ism Coun­cil and the next dec­ade at the World Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion (UNWTO).” He dis­cusses much of this in the podcast.]

Dur­ing the 47-minute pod­cast inter­view, the former top offi­cial and innov­at­or at the Inter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port Asso­ci­ation (IATA), World Travel & Tour­ism Coun­cil (WTTC), and United Nations World Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion (UNWTO) com­men­ted on the effect­ive­ness of his former employ­ers at influ­en­cing pos­it­ive change at the grass roots. He also related when and how he star­ted tak­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity seriously.

In his cur­rent roles as pres­id­ent of the Inter­na­tion­al Coali­tion of Tour­ism Part­ners, pro­fess­or and chief dis­rup­tion archi­tect at GreenEarth.travel, and co-founder of the SUN^x Pro­gram, Prof Lip­man advoc­ates con­cepts such as “green growth”, “impact-travel”, and “trav­el­ism”, and asserts that cli­mate change is “exist­en­tial”.

His firm belief that cli­mate change has the poten­tial to knock out our spe­cies has not only inspired Prof Lip­man to add the “x” to SUN^x, but is also driv­ing him to pur­sue the most ambi­tious pro­ject of his career; the real­isa­tion of a Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work (SUN^x) that will empower and resource a new gen­er­a­tion who must face the exist­en­tial threat head on.

In the play­er embed­ded at the top of this post, click play to listen now or down­load to listen later. (About pod­casts & how to sub­scribe to The “Good Tour­ism” Pod­cast.) Altern­at­ively, listen to it via You­Tube (audio only):

Fea­tured image: Geof­frey Lip­man deliv­er­ing the key­note address at Mekong Tour­ism For­um 2016, Sihan­ouk­ville, Cam­bod­ia. Pic­ture taken by Dav­id Gill­banks who was rap­por­teur for the event.