How will 100,000 climate champions achieve a climate-neutral future for tourism?

Olly Wheatcroft, Pro­gram Man­ager for “GT” Insight Part­ner SUN^x — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work, writes about the organ­isa­tion’s Cli­mate Cham­pi­ons Pro­gram, an edu­ca­tion and train­ing ini­ti­at­ive to sup­port 100,000 next-gen­er­a­tion lead­ers in all UN regions by 2030.

The SUN^x — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work (with the x being “exist­en­tial”) is a new sys­tem for tour­ism des­tin­a­tions and industry stake­hold­ers to build cli­mate resi­li­ence in line with the tar­gets of the Par­is Agree­ment. SUN^x aims for “Cli­mate Friendly Travel”.

SUN^x is a leg­acy to the late Maurice Strong, the fath­er of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, and the first per­son to put cli­mate change on the glob­al agenda. Start­ing at the 1972 Stock­holm Con­fer­ence and then the 1992 Rio Earth Sum­mit, the Brundtland Com­mis­sion, and the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, his tire­less work on put­ting cli­mate change at the top of the glob­al agenda cul­min­ated in the Par­is Cli­mate Accord in 2015. 

My col­league, Geof­frey Lip­man, SUN^x Co-founder, met Maurice at the Rio Earth Sum­mit and began a 25-year friend­ship which saw them apply the Agenda 21 frame­work to travel & tour­ism and to push for a more ambi­tious and pro­act­ive response to the exist­en­tial threat posed by cli­mate change.

It is against this back­drop that SUN^x has developed a sys­tem to sup­port the trans­form­a­tion of the world’s largest industry to meet the 2050 tar­gets set out at Par­is. Our sys­tem con­sists of four components:

1. Cli­mate Neut­ral Ambi­tions Registry + Annu­al Report & Think Tank — An online, block­chain-based register sup­por­ted by the Gov­ern­ment of Malta for travel & tour­ism com­pan­ies and com­munit­ies to record their com­mit­ment to Cli­mate Friendly Travel and their 2050 Cli­mate Neut­ral Ambi­tion Tra­ject­or­ies. These will be self-entered & updated annu­ally and will be form­al input to the UNFCCC Register and coordin­ated with WTTC. It is sup­por­ted by an Annu­al Report on the status of the tour­ism sec­tor and an annu­al Think Tank in Malta to review/revamp it for the fol­low­ing year. The first Cli­mate Friendly Travel Ambi­tions Report can be down­loaded here.
2. Online Learn­ing Frame­work for schools, gradu­ates and staff train­ing pro­grams — An online portal of Cli­mate Friendly Travel data, research, mul­ti­me­dia, and third-party feeds, as well as a course for gradu­ates, and a car­toon series for kids.
3. STRONG Cli­mate Cham­pi­ons, 100,000 in UN States by 2030 to sup­port change — A plan to place 100,000 sponsored Strong Cli­mate Cham­pi­ons across all UN States by 2030, to help com­pan­ies and com­munit­ies transform.
4. SDG17 Part­ner­ship Alli­ance for “gloc­al” out­reach — A pro­gram of SDG 17 Alli­ances for spon­sors & deliv­ery part­ners giv­ing mutu­al Cli­mate Friendly Travel sup­port and outreach.

The Cli­mate Cham­pi­ons pro­gram is an essen­tial part of this sys­tem as it is designed to sup­port the next gen­er­a­tion of pion­eers, who, like Maurice Strong, will be respons­ible for ensur­ing that the neces­sary changes take place. 

The pro­gram will sup­port 100,000 next-gen­er­a­tion change-makers by 2030, with SDG-17 Part­ner­ships, to help the industry trans­ition towards a cli­mate-neut­ral sec­tor. Our tar­get is to have a coun­try pro­gram in every UN state, sup­por­ted by a loc­al spon­sor and led by a coun­try pro­gram leader.

Suc­cess­ful applic­ants are chosen by demon­strat­ing their under­stand­ing of Cli­mate Friendly Travel and why the decar­bon­isa­tion of the travel & tour­ism industry is essen­tial to its future.

Once selec­ted, the Cli­mate Cham­pi­ons will receive life­time access to the SUN^x Cli­mate Friendly Travel Portal designed to give easy access to con­tent, data, and sup­port on Cli­mate Friendly Travel, as well as a related course for gradu­ate stu­dents. It is spe­cific­ally aimed at people plan­ning careers in the travel & tour­ism sector.

We cur­rently have coun­try pro­grams run­ning in Indone­sia and Cam­bod­ia thanks to spon­sor­ship from the EXO Found­a­tion, and have recently launched new pro­grams in Crete and Canada sup­por­ted by the Hania Hotel Asso­ci­ation and Ingle Inter­na­tion­al respectively. 

Through fur­ther SDG-17 col­lab­or­a­tion with industry part­ners, we aim to cre­ate a glob­al edu­ca­tion and train­ing pro­gram to sup­port a move­ment of young people who see the exist­en­tial threat posed by cli­mate change and are com­mit­ted to work­ing towards a 2050 cli­mate-neut­ral future.

Fea­tured image: Aero­plane against a sun­set. By Gel­linger (CC0) via Pixabay.

Downloads

• CLIMATE FRIENDLY TRAVEL – AMBITION REPORT, Septem­ber 2019 (PDF 1.16 MB; hos­ted off-site by SUN^x; name & email required)
• Cli­mate Friendly Travel defined PDF (159 KB) 

About the author

Olly Wheatcroft is Pro­gram Man­ager at SUN^x Malta where he is respons­ible for oper­a­tions and glob­al devel­op­ment of the SUN^x — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work. He is an entre­pren­eur­i­al digit­al mar­keter with 20 years’ exper­i­ence of pro­ject and account man­age­ment focussed on sus­tain­able tour­ism. He cut his teeth work­ing for responsibletravel.com where he man­aged mul­ti­me­dia des­tin­a­tion mar­ket­ing pro­jects for tour­ist boards and large travel brands.