We have signed the Glasgow Declaration for Climate Action!

© Good Travel Guide, September 2021

The Glasgow Declaration will officially be launched in November 2021 during the COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland but introductory online sessions have already taken place this week on September 21st. These sessions were intended to present the foundations and goals of the Declaration as well as to outline case studies of stakeholders implementing actions for the climate in tourism. 

The acceleration of climate change, triggered by mass production and consumption and unsustainable behaviours creates an urge to act. Tourism is indeed not only a sector that is highly dependent and vulnerable to climate change and biodiversity loss -especially in some under-represented communities- but also one that can make a difference by doing efforts for sustainability. 

The main goal of the Declaration is to work all together in a sector-wide approach to implement climate actions in travel and tourism during Covid recovery and in the next decade. The Glasgow Declaration sets rules in line with the Paris agreement of 2015, which aimed at bringing governments to work together. Niclas Svenningsen summarized the idea behind the Glasgow Declaration by saying it is time to move from negotiation to implementation. 

“We need to move from negotiation to implementation”

Niclas Svenningsen, Manager, Global Climate Action, UN Climate Change (UNFCCC)

More concretely, the Declaration aims at fostering a decrease in carbon emission by half before 2030 and to reach zero emission before 2050. It is based on 5 principles : 

• Measure all travel and tourism-related emissions.
• Decarbonise all aspects of tourism
• Regenerate ecosystems 
• Collaborate and work together
• Finance training and research

The Glasgow Declaration can be found on the Website OnePlanetNetwork.org. Let’s all commit to implementing sustainability in all our actions. 

You can also find the recording of the information session here.