Signatories to Tourism Declares Climate Emergency on “system change”, “regulatory action”

Cli­mate change is real. How do we respond?

The first four points in the Tour­ism Declares Cli­mate Emer­gency declar­a­tion are per­son­al under­tak­ings or organ­isa­tion­al com­mit­ments to plan and to change and to share and to col­lab­or­ate in rela­tion to a sig­nat­ory’s declar­a­tion of cli­mate emergency. 

All power to them!

How­ever the fifth point in the declar­a­tion is “an uncon­scion­able abdic­a­tion of respons­ib­il­ity and a lack of con­sid­er­a­tion for fel­low tour­ism stake­hold­ers”, accord­ing to your cor­res­pond­ent in a recent post about tour­ism and the real­ity of cli­mate change.

Why the harsh descrip­tion? Because the fifth com­pels sig­nat­or­ies to call for unspe­cified reg­u­lat­ory inter­ven­tion in the air travel sec­tor, which is likely to also impact avi­ation-depend­ent des­tin­a­tions. And “sys­tem change across the industry”, whatever that means, pre­sum­ably has con­sequences for everyone.

Here is that fifth point Tour­ism Declares sig­nat­or­ies com­mit to (along with the pre­amble and the submission):

In case “uncon­scion­able abdic­a­tion …” was unfair, and to bet­ter under­stand what “sys­tem change” and “urgent reg­u­lat­ory action” means to sig­nat­or­ies, your cor­res­pond­ent reached out via Linked­In to the bosses of sev­er­al of the sig­nat­ory organ­isa­tions as well as a few of the individuals. 

Among those con­tac­ted were the instig­at­ors of Tour­ism Declares: Much Bet­ter Adven­tures CEO Alex Nar­ra­cott and author & edit­or Jeremy Smith.

Your cor­res­pond­ent asked every­one the same two ques­tions per­tain­ing to point 5 of the Tour­ism Declares declar­a­tion — What do you think “sys­tem change” means? And what spe­cif­ic “urgent reg­u­lat­ory action” will you be call­ing for? Your cor­res­pond­ent invited writ­ten responses via email. 

Thank you very much to those who respon­ded. You will find that I have copied and pas­ted your answers in good faith. Sup­ple­ment­ary ques­tions and answers [and addi­tion­al inform­a­tion in square brack­ets] have been included where appro­pri­ate. And, where reques­ted or offered, fast replies have been wholly replaced with more con­sidered answers received later.

Except for the joint response by Tour­ism Declares’ co-founders, which is last, the responses that fol­low are in order of receipt: 

Jared Meyers, Chairman, Legacy Vacation Resorts (USA)

JM: Sys­tems change is needed because the cur­rent sys­tem incentiv­izes beha­vi­or which con­trib­utes to our cli­mate emer­gency rather than fix­ing it. We need a price on car­bon to move soci­ety away from fossil fuels and towards renew­able energy sources. This will also con­trib­ute toward invest­ment in clean­er energy tech­no­lo­gies and decarbonization.

Addi­tion­ally, share­hold­er primacy among busi­nesses gets in the way of full stake­hold­er ori­ent­a­tion so the envir­on­ment is not con­sidered at the same level as the share­hold­er. To pro­tect our nat­ur­al sys­tems, they must have rights and also be con­sidered when busi­nesses make their decisions.

DG: So what reg­u­lat­ory action will you be call­ing for to change the cur­rent system?

JM: We are work­ing with Ceres [a sus­tain­ab­il­ity not-for-profit] to put a price on car­bon. This would require fed­er­al regulation.

Reg­u­la­tion is not the primary means that we seek for pos­it­ive impact. As a con­trib­ut­or to the busi­ness for good move­ment through con­scious cap­it­al­ism and B Corps [“busi­ness that bal­ances pur­pose and profit” accord­ing to the US-based not-for-profit B Lab], we sup­port trans­par­ent and cred­ible action towards an inclus­ive, equit­able and regen­er­at­ive soci­ety. Many busi­nesses are doing this and we use their suc­cess to inspire oth­er busi­nesses to fol­low. In some instances, gov­ern­ment is cre­at­ing policy and reg­u­la­tion based on the proof that busi­ness can bal­ance profit and pur­pose in a way that pro­motes a shared prosperity.

Per­son­ally, I am aware that we have lim­ited time to make enorm­ous change and reg­u­la­tions and policies must be part of the solu­tion. But reg­u­la­tion isn’t our chosen path to effect neces­sary cli­mate change. We first look to our own prac­tices, our sup­pli­ers, our employ­ees and even how we can edu­cate and mobil­ize our guests to use the power of their pur­chases to cre­ate the world they seek. We sup­port cli­mate based vot­ing and mak­ing it easi­er for all employ­ees to vote through the Time to Vote cam­paign and Busi­ness for Amer­ica. We would like to see all busi­nesses adopt the leg­al frame­work of being a bene­fit cor­por­a­tion but have not sought to reg­u­late it. If there was a push among reg­u­lat­ors for busi­nesses to adopt bene­fit cor­por­a­tion com­mit­ments, we would support.

So spe­cif­ic to your ques­tion, the only reg­u­la­tion we act­ively sup­port and assist relates to car­bon pri­cing. The most recent bill that we sup­por­ted related to the Energy Innov­a­tion Act. I hope this cla­ri­fies things for you related to how we seek to be a force for pos­it­ive change.

Mark Wright, MD & Founder, The Adventure Connection (UK)

MW: I am a pas­sion­ate advoc­ate of the Tour­ism Declares move­ment and am doing everything I can on a per­son­al and com­pany level to drive change.

What do I think sys­tem change means?

I have been invest­ig­at­ing this on sev­er­al levels. The use of fossil fuels is very deeply embed­ded in our soci­ety (and around much of the world). For instance, the cur­rent ‘sys­tem’ around the avi­ation sec­tor is highly organ­ized on a world­wide basis for effi­ciency. This effi­ciency allows for thou­sands of tonnes of fuel to reach air­ports, and then be loaded into planes and burned by the time it reaches its des­tin­a­tion. A Boe­ing 777 for instance, burns 135,000 tonnes as it flies to its des­tin­a­tion. This halves the weight of the plane by the time it reaches its des­tin­a­tion. The oth­er half is left in the atmo­sphere. And there are around 100,000 flights every day. 

I do not want people to stop fly­ing. I want things to change so that air­lines are forced to find clean­er ways of fly­ing so that car­bon emis­sions are reduced. Or for new dis­ruptors to come in and devel­op com­pletely new ways of tack­ling this issue.

At the moment, there appears to be no vis­ion com­ing from the avi­ation industry for a future altern­at­ive. Why would they change? There has been 70 or so years of invest­ment in devel­op­ing the infra­struc­ture they now have in place and every minute lost and every cent lost in effi­ciency is pre­cious to them. 

Pres­sure needs to come from gov­ern­ment to FORCE change. I do not have the answer yet as to what this should be or when it should be achiev­able by. But I’d like to hear gov­ern­ments (and the industry) pub­lish­ing their vis­ion for the future. E.g. no per­mis­sion to take off or land by say 2050 unless x% of fuel is renewable/clean.

So sys­tem change means: top down change by gov­ern­ment put­ting dead­lines in place (sim­il­ar to the ini­ti­at­ives on phas­ing out pet­rol and dies­el cars). Fol­lowed by massive infra­struc­ture and engin­eer­ing changes to meet dead­lines and object­ives set by gov­ern­ments. And this has to be world­wide. It’s a world­wide prob­lem so there needs to be world­wide co-oper­a­tion. A very tough chal­lenge I know, but one which we have to face up to. 

Urgent action is needed on:

1. Not allow­ing older, inef­fi­cient planes to be used (this needs to be done inter­na­tion­ally, prob­ably by ICAO, not just in the UK). 
2. Adopt a duty, sim­il­ar to the UK’s Air Pas­sen­ger Duty, at an increased level suf­fi­cient to reduce demand (e.g. The Green Fly­ing Duty). The rev­en­ues should then be ring-fenced for invest­ment into R&D for elec­tric planes as well as rail­way improvements.
3. There is cur­rently no tax or VAT on avi­ation fuel. It is heav­ily sub­sid­ised. This makes little sense for an industry which pol­lutes so heav­ily. In my view, the avi­ation industry must reduce its fair share of emis­sions if we are to reach our glob­al tar­gets. It is time for the air­line industry to step up and play its part in a green­er future for travel. And the fin­an­cial pres­sures and reduced demand which this causes the air­lines and avi­ation man­u­fac­tur­ers, just might be enough to encour­age more invest­ment into devel­op­ing clean­er ways of flying. 
4. Push for retrac­tion of the Chica­go Con­ven­tion agree­ment under which “mem­bers of the Inter­na­tion­al Civil Avi­ation Organ­isa­tion (ICAO), includ­ing the United King­dom, are pre­ven­ted from tax­ing inter­na­tion­al avi­ation fuel, or any prox­ies for fuel. 

Willem Neimeijer, Founder, Khiri Travel (Thailand)

WN: The industry needs some clear stand­ards when it comes to car­bon off­set and meas­ur­ing the car­bon foot­print of cli­ent travel. Only then can we see a sys­tem­ic change. At the moment it’s a bit of a free for all — with wildly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing num­bers. So that is what we mean with some sort of reg­u­lat­ory action — per­haps the over­sight by a neut­ral industry organ­iz­a­tions such as PATA or GSTC?

Karen Simmonds, Founder, Travel Matters (UK)

KS: It is because of the growth in tourism/travel and our reli­ance on fossil fuels in mari­time and avi­ation that there needs to be a sys­tem change. The industry needs to swap this reli­ance on fossil fuel and invest in clean­er fuel/renewable energy. The sys­tem change can come from gov­ern­ments tax­ing the rev­en­ue and use the levy/tax to invest in more research as we are very much up against the clock.

It’s not just about con­sid­er­ing our default beha­viour and pas­sion for fly­ing around the globe and how we reduce our car­bon in our travel choices, we have to con­sider the energy we use in our homes. Can we reduce the car­bon through meas­ures such as insu­la­tion and bet­ter energy effi­ciency of our appli­ances, set­ting tem­per­at­ure gauges lower, improv­ing our heat or cool­ing sys­tems? We know we can reduce car­bon by look­ing at what we eat and reduce our food waste.

I’d be in favour of a car­bon tax levy – it would be a good place to start. Busi­nesses or indi­vidu­als who travel fre­quently would con­trib­ute the most. I think this would be a fair solu­tion. The pol­luters should be pay­ing more for research.

Gov­ern­ments should be listen­ing more to the voices of the envir­on­ment­al­ists and those keen on social justice. Indi­vidu­ally, we all have a respons­ib­il­ity to lobby, edu­cate and be heard before it is too late. 

Justin Francis, Founder and CEO, Responsible Travel (UK)

JF: [link]

[The link Mr Fran­cis sent by way of a reply was to Respons­ible Travel’s (RT’s) “mani­festo for the future of tour­ism”. The doc­u­ment demon­strates that RT have thought this through in some depth. And there are echoes of it in oth­er sig­nat­or­ies’ responses. 

The mani­festo dis­cusses how avi­ation fuel is not taxed the same as oth­er trans­port fuels and that R&D efforts toward low and zero emis­sion air­craft need more sup­port. RT there­fore pro­poses “a new glob­al tax on avi­ation (based on a reformed ver­sion of the UK’s APD [Air Pas­sen­ger Duty]) that will be ring-fenced for Research and Devel­op­ment (R&D) in elec­tric avi­ation and to improve rail­way connectivity”.

Per the mani­festo, “RT” wants to: 

• Increase APD in the UK. 
• Rename it the Green Fly­ing Duty (GFD).
• Ring-fence GFD rev­en­ues for R&D in elec­tric planes and to improve rail­way connectivity.
• Ensure that GFD reduces the demand for avi­ation until elec­tric planes can handle it.
• Encour­age nation­al gov­ern­ments to roll out GFD globally. 
• Make GFD high­er than APD and fairer (high­er classes pay more; private jets pay most) and even high­er again for domest­ic flights.

There was no response by JF to a fol­low-up ques­tion hence all this square-brack­et exposition.]

Vicky Smith, Founder, Earth Changers (UK)

VS: I agree sys­tem change is required. Tour­ism is cur­rently com­pletely geared to volume, not value, which res­ults in addi­tion­al car­bon emis­sions: Tour­ist boards are giv­en quant­it­at­ive tar­gets by nation­al gov­ern­ments rather than qual­it­at­ive meas­ures (such as vis­it­or sat­is­fac­tion, host Hap­pi­ness — such as Bhutan), which cas­cade down to com­mer­cial organ­isa­tions’ pur­suit of volume and profit over social con­sid­er­a­tion, cul­tur­al pre­ser­va­tion or envir­on­ment­al con­ser­va­tion. And so we end up with budget air­lines, huge cruise ships and home rent­al net­works, often mak­ing des­tin­a­tions uncom­fort­able places to be, wheth­er through over­tour­ism, pol­lu­tion, or loss of loc­al pop­u­la­tion and sense of place. 

The whole Pur­pose of tour­ism requires a rethink — to be a force for good and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, not degrad­a­tion — which is why I cre­ated Earth Changers. All tour­ism, giv­en its known 10% of glob­al jobs as much as 10% GDP, should con­sider social-envir­on­ment­al impacts too, includ­ing climate. 

As for reg­u­lat­ory action — when con­sumers are incentiv­ised to choose high­er car­bon-impact­ing trans­port options by the volume-not-value low cost approach above, we end up with unne­ces­sary emis­sions. If fair and equal tax were applied to avi­ation jet fuel as car pet­rol, it would not only hamper unne­ces­sary ‘spon­tan­eous’ demand, but if those tax rev­en­ues were com­mit­ted to car­bon-friendly travel devel­op­ment (be it R&D in altern­at­ive syn­thet­ic fuels as required in the next 7 years, from the glob­al cli­mate Think Tank I’ve just par­ti­cip­ated in, or indeed devel­op­ment and/or sub­sidy of rail net­works, then we can start to shift the mass trav­el­ling pubic to less car­bon intens­ive means of trans­port. Addi­tion­ally, avi­ation emis­sions should be included in Nation­ally Determ­ined Con­tri­bu­tions for, and any new trans­port infra­struc­ture devel­op­ments made in line with, the Par­is Agreement. 

Saskia Griep, Founder & CEO, Better Places Travel (Netherlands)

SG: What we mean by sys­tem change, is that all act­ors need to work togeth­er to change to a more sus­tain­able tour­ism industry. This means as much busi­ness own­ers and travel agen­cies, as it does cus­tom­ers and the gov­ern­ment. We all need to strive to do bet­ter, and only by work­ing togeth­er will we accom­plish the real and all-encom­passing change that is neces­sary — where we value authen­t­ic exper­i­ences more than tick­ing off a buck­et list, where we fly less and travel for longer, where the money spent in tour­ism reaches the loc­als dir­ectly, and where gov­ern­ments are doing their bit to ensure easi­er and safe modes of pub­lic trans­port and a level play­ing field for train/buses and planes in terms of tax­a­tion. Lead­ing from that, one urgent reg­u­lat­ory action we have long sup­por­ted and will con­tin­ue to pas­sion­ately advoc­ate for is the intro­duc­tion of fair tax­a­tion on air­lines fuels and tick­ets. It just does­n’t make sense that it is so dis­pro­por­tion­ally cheap­er to fly than to take the train on main­land Europe, and a lot of that can be traced back to unfair taxation.

Jeremy Smith, author & editor (UK)

JS, on behalf of him­self and his Tour­ism Declares co-founder Alex Nar­ra­cott, CEO of Much Bet­ter Adven­tures (UK):

The cli­mate emer­gency is caused by the way our eco­nom­ic sys­tem oper­ates. We there­fore need to change the sys­tem to fix the prob­lem. As For­um for the Future writes in their excel­lent explan­a­tion of sys­tem change: “Sys­tem­ic change is where rela­tion­ships between dif­fer­ent aspects of the sys­tem have changed towards new out­comes and goals. And it’s driv­en by trans­form­a­tion­al, not incre­ment­al change.”

We haven’t set an arbit­rary goal. Our goal is the one defined by the world’s top cli­mate sci­ent­ists, and this is why our cent­ral com­mit­ment is to “accept cur­rent IPCC advice stat­ing the need to cut glob­al car­bon emis­sions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030 to keep the plan­et with­in 1.5 degrees of warm­ing.” This is why all our sig­nat­or­ies com­mit to ensur­ing their “Cli­mate Emer­gency Plan rep­res­ents actions designed to achieve this.”

How­ever fast the busi­nesses and organ­isa­tions declar­ing with us might act, we believe they will be able to change faster if they are sup­por­ted by the right reg­u­la­tions and gov­ern­ment incent­ives. We saw last week the impact “urgent reg­u­lat­ory action” can have on the growth in avi­ation emis­sions, with the UK appeal court’s decision not to allow a third run­way to be built at Heath­row because it was not in line with the government’s com­mit­ment to the Par­is Cli­mate Agreement’s tar­get of keep­ing glob­al tem­per­at­ure rise as close to 1.5C as possible.

There are oth­er reg­u­lat­ory mech­an­isms that might fur­ther accel­er­ate this trans­ition, such as pro­pos­als for a Fre­quent Fly­er Levy [PDF], a socially pro­gress­ive tax frame­work that has been sup­por­ted by the likes of the UK Net-Zero Advis­ory Group to the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change [PDF].

Bey­ond this though, we delib­er­ately don’t have a spe­cif­ic set of policies for sys­tem change laid out, as we have only been oper­a­tion­al a few weeks. We are focussed on cre­at­ing the momentum for our industry to find the answers together.

My take

Rest easy. There are no Reds under the bed. There is no big-gov­ern­ment con­spir­acy to take over travel & tour­ism or to tax it into obli­vi­on — not inten­tion­ally, any­way! But the road to hell is paved with inten­tions — good, bad, and indifferent. 

“Sys­tem (or sys­tem­ic) change” sounds okay when couched in terms of incent­ives, but any vicious dic­tat­or worth the label knows how to use incent­ives. Con­sign three gen­er­a­tions of a dis­sid­ent’s fam­ily to a pris­on work camp and the dis­sid­ent’s fol­low­ers soon fall in line. Their incent­ive is very clear indeed.

Hyper­bole aside, my only point here is that the vagar­ies of vague­ness mean that we have to be vigil­ant. What exactly are all these people and organ­isa­tions (75 at writ­ing) think they are sign­ing up to? Hence this post.

Hap­pily, there is a lot less fluff, more spe­cificity, and more com­mon ground in the responses above than your cor­res­pond­ent sus­pec­ted there might be. Inter­est­ingly, there are plenty of echoes of Justin Fran­cis’ RT mani­festo, such as the call for fair tax treat­ment across all fossil fuels regard­less of their pur­pose. Sounds fair.

But even in such a small sample size there are dif­fer­ences that may lead to schism in future. There­fore Tour­ism Declares’ founders would do well to do away with the vague old fifth alto­geth­er, or at least attempt to weave the sig­nat­or­ies’ most com­mon threads into a new 5). The extant sig­nat­or­ies might then reaf­firm their declar­a­tion (or not) and at least pro­spect­ive sig­nat­or­ies will know what it is they are com­mit­ting to. 

A demo­crat­ic mech­an­ism for updat­ing the declar­a­tion might be a use­ful fea­ture, if not a required one, for keep­ing tabs on PESTs (polit­ic­al, eco­nom­ic, social and tech­no­lo­gic­al changes) and the evolving sci­ence. In doing that Tour­ism Declares could pos­i­tion itself as a more inclus­ive answer to or com­pan­ion for SUN^x’s invit­a­tion-only policy think tank.

Oh, and your cor­res­pond­ent reck­ons Tour­ism Declares’ logo of lost lug­gage needs a rethink … But to each their own.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Cli­mate Emer­gency. Mel­bourne cli­mate march for our future. By John Eng­lart (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Flickr.

Afterword

Des­pite your correspondent’s encour­age­ment to think about and sup­ply writ­ten answers, one sig­nat­ory (not neces­sar­ily fea­tured in this post) wanted to pre­view what “GT” would use before pub­lish­ing! They said it was because it was not yet clear in their mind. Call­ing for “sys­tem change” and “urgent reg­u­lat­ory action” in such a con­fused state is surely as irre­spons­ible as doing so with blind certainty.

Anoth­er sig­nat­ory (not neces­sar­ily fea­tured) respon­ded imme­di­ately on Linked­In with some­thing about a glob­al “need for a sys­tems-based shift away from an “ego-sys­tem aware­ness” to an “eco-sys­tem aware­ness” for sys­tems change”. Appar­ently that involves becom­ing less “ego-cent­ric” and more “eco-cent­ric”. Uh, okay. Your cor­res­pond­ent sug­ges­ted they think about it and email a response.

Yet anoth­er sig­nat­ory (not neces­sar­ily fea­tured) sug­ges­ted that I ask the two founders what the fifth means because they wrote it. Well, of course I asked the authors. How­ever, is it not inter­est­ing to find out what the sig­nat­or­ies thought it meant when they com­mit­ted to the vagueness?

Your cor­res­pond­ent sus­pects that some of the sig­nat­or­ies felt that declar­ing cli­mate emer­gency and com­mit­ting to the fifth was the right thing to do but per­haps did­n’t think it through. And then when asked about it had a … minor panic? 

As someone who also feels, and who is often wracked with self-doubt and uncer­tainty and anxi­ety, your cor­res­pond­ent under­stands and relates to this pre­dic­a­ment very well. Your cor­res­pond­ent gets mad but­ter­flies every time he pub­lishes an opin­ion­ated post, fear­ing that there will be those in the industry who will shun him for play­ing Dev­il’s advoc­ate or for blow­ing smoke into their echo cham­bers. And, unless it is merely para­noia on your cor­res­pond­ent’s part, some shun­ning already appears to be hap­pen­ing. If that is indeed the case, then those people should know that they are giv­ing cold shoulder to an ally and pro­spect­ive part­ner.

In any case, just as your cor­res­pond­ent enjoys play­ing Dev­il’s advoc­ate and is always open to chan­ging his mind — and does so reg­u­larly on a range of nuanced issues — “GT” is open to both ortho­dox and het­ero­dox ideas on any­thing travel & tour­ism-related. For those who would like to share their unique per­spect­ive on what does, could, or should make tour­ism good, please down­load the “GT” Insight guidelines.

And if you would like yours truly to con­tin­ue to risk offend­ing — without ever set­ting out to offend — you may sup­port me privately and anonym­ously. Please …