Travel Green Planet 2021- A Post Covid-19 Collaborative Effort

ECOTRANS - March 11^th 2021
by Gordon Sillence

As a first virtual ITB kicks off the 2021 global tourism parade – marking one year of a continuing Covid-19 hammering of the classical tourism industry, disaster brings about drastic changes we need to make an urgent review of what new challenges and opportunities this presents tourism stakeholders across the globe. 

Towards a Green and Equitable Tourism Sector Recovery 2030

However, the multiple crises scenario is not new, and many of us will see the absolute need to make the post-Covid-19 world recovery as green and equitable for the long term. Clearly the money for sustainable development is now on the table, and all stakeholders need to collaborate to spend this in a wise and timely manner.

16 years ago the Tourism2030 platform was designed by the European Environment Agency, UNEP,  UNTWO and the NGO ECOTRANS European Tourism Sustainability Network for to do just this job – ie connecting stakeholders to create  peace-based, green local to global tourism sustainable production and consumption supply chains to counter social inequalities, climate change, and biodiversity loss with smart green innovative governance and business management of our precious territories, wherever we live. (See: About Tourism2030 )

 Travel Green Planet 2030 Initiative

The Travel Green Planet Initiative enters its 3^rd year with the launch of the European Tourism Going Green 2030  project funded by the EU COSME programme up to 2023. The Tourism 2030 Portal will become the ICT hub of an SCP supply chain certification clustering process that will be available to all tourism stakeholders wishing to develop green business practices.  It is particularly focused on European tourism SMEs, giving them access to sustainability certification and support systems in Europe’s post-Covid-19 attempts to recover European tourism in the most sustainable way possible.

European Tourism Going Green 2030

At the European level this translates at first into a six country programme that will develop common training and support systems for SMEs who wish to operate in a more sustainable manner.  Sustainability certification is the key, and the European-based clusters will develop stakeholder maps that will be used to highlight green tourism service providers and put them into contact with green product and service suppliers in their regional clusters and into a global sustainable tourism market place: the Green Travel Maps.  

Local to Global SCP Certification Clustering Process for Protected Areas

The Tourism 2030 portal will offer this certification clustering system to all levels of governance – local to global – to build local to  global SCP certification clusters in line with SDG 12- Sustainable Consumption and Production.  With a clear common value system based on supply chain certification processes the project will continue its collaborative approach with key global stakeholders brought together at ITB 2020 to develop its 2030 Countdown process to SDG implementation by tourism stakeholders. The challenge as ever is to collaborate before it’s too late for those protected areas were a greener more social form of tourism can positively determine the fate of local biodiversity and local communities, almost forgotten in the face of the Covid-19 …

Any question or suggestion? Contact gordon.sillence@ecotrans.de or herbert.hamele@ecotrans.de