When ResponsibleTravel.com announced the call for entries for the annual World Responsible Tourism Awards a few days ago, there was one new category I was particularly pleased to see introduced. According to the blurb on responsibletravel’s website, the new “Award for Innovation for Carbon Reduction” will recognise “an innovative and transparent approach to reducing carbon”
I like the way this award has been framed. First, that key word “transparent”. Over the years there has been too much smoke and mirrors in the name of addressing climate change – from dubious carbon offset schemes to branding exercises in declaring destinations carbon neutral – where some juggling of numbers and careful use of words suggested a project was doing far more than it really was. It’s going to take more than clever language to avert climate disaster.
I was also pleased to see that this award celebrates innovation. With the total global numbers of tourists now tipping over 1 billion a year, it is clear that rising awareness of climate change’s risks is not scaring the global population into taking a mass staycation.
Thankfully opportunities still remain to excite people that there are ways forward, chances for a more innovative, better world through taking progressive actions to reduce climate change. Last weekend the Guardian published an extract from Naomi Klein’s new book on climate change and capitalism – This Changes Everything. Once the lens shifted from one of crisis to possibility, I discovered that I no longer feared immersing myself in the scientific reality of the climate threat,” writes Klein. “And like many others, I have begun to see all kinds of ways that climate change could become a catalysing force for positive change.”
What pleased me most about this award, however, is that the words chosen to frame what is meant by innovation are not specifically looking for new forms of technology, but rather a different “approach”. At last year’s World Responsible Tourism Day, Rebecca Hawkins, managing director of the Responsible Hospitality Partnership, spoke about how companies in tourism can address climate change. She put up a slide titled ‘Delivering savings via some great stuff’, with images of a wide range of technological innovations employed by accommodation providers to reduce energy demand. They ranged from voltage optimisation devices to low flow shower heads and aerators, and many of them, she explained, deliver impressive savings in themselves.
However, she added, the fact remains that in the twenty two years since the first Rio climate conference in 1992, and despite numerous energy savings technologies being adopted by companies across the industry, total emissions of climate related gases from the accommodation sector have risen at 3.2% a year. What this means, said Hawkins, is that if the industry carries on growing at the same rate, then by 2035 total emissions from the accommodation sector will increase by 156%. A line from This Changes Everything echoes her comments: “In 2013,” writes Klein, “global carbon dioxide emissions were 61% higher than they were in 1990, when negotiations toward a climate treaty began in earnest.”
Stuff is not the solution,” said Hawkins at the end of her talk. What is needed instead, she said, are “new business models” – in other words, a new approach. I’m looking forward to discovering what the best of tourism’s new “approaches to reducing carbon” might be.
You can nominate people or organisations you believe should win this award and any of the other 12 categories by clicking here. Nominations are open until Monday 6th April.