UNWTO seeking Submissions to Information Exchange Service on Climate and Tourism

The UNWTO has created a Climate and Tourism Information Exchange Service, a new resource to serve as a dynamic display for data, studies, policy papers, videos and other material related to tourism and climate change. The documents submitted will contribute to the output from the 2nd International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism (Davos, Switzerland, 1-3 October 2007) and beyond.

Users can access the Climate and Tourism Information Exchange Service through climate.UNWTO.org - the UNWTO’s website for the Climate Change and Tourism. Registered users will be able to submit their inputs and browse the contents.

“This service is a contribution to foster the knowledge base and the search for solutions to face the climate challenge. We have to facilitate information exchange and help build networks which will constitute the true basis for concrete action. The tourism sector has to mitigate and adapt in the face of global warming and explore and put in place more climate-friendly and climate-proof alternatives,” said UNWTO Assistant Secretary-General, Geoffrey Lipman.

The UNWTO is studying the relationship between climate and tourism and in 2003 convened the 1st International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism in Djerba, Tunisia. The Djerba Declaration set out a framework for action for stakeholders in the public and private sectors.

Since then, a growing body of knowledge has been generated addressing the complex relationships between tourism and climate change showing that the sector has an important role to play in both mitigation of its own impacts and adaptation to evolving global norms of behaviour. Furthermore research and action on tourism and poverty provides a good base for coherent consideration of these issues.

These issues are at the centre of the 2nd International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism in Davos, which will be followed by a Ministerial Summit in London (13 November). The issue will also be a central matter for consideration by the UNWTO General Assembly in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia (22-29 November) and will help formulate UNWTO’s input to the UN’s Secretary General’s strategy for the upcoming negotiations under the UN Climate Change Convention in December in Bali, Indonesia.

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