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The WTM Responsible Tourism Programme this year is the biggest yet with panels on Partnerships for Better Tourism in Destinations, Increasing the Local Economic Impact of Tourism, Reducing Energy and Water Consumption – Good for the Environment and the Bottom Line, How to use Responsible Tourism to drive sales, Everyone Deserves a Holiday: Social Inclusion,. Better Wildlife Tourism, Tourism Take and Animal Welfare, River & Lake Cruising, Employment Conditions in the Tourism Industry, and How to Choose a Responsible Volunteering Opportunity Abroad.
Stephen Sackur will be interviewing Charlie Mayhew of Tusk and Colin Bell of Africa’s Finest about what the industry can do to assist the conservationists in defeating the poachers before the announcement of the World Responsible Tourism Awards. The debate this year is about what more the industry could do take more responsibility for child protection. The programme will be, by turns, inspirational, educational and provocative. There is the Responsible Tourism networking event after the debate on the Wednesday. Programme available on line here and here
This year’s short list will be published in the next couple of days on the Awards website
There were over 2,000 climate change protests around the world to draw attention to the issue as UN talks opened in September and over 300,000 marched in New York. Read more
Very little came out of the UN Meeting – the New York Times has seen a leaked copy of a draft of the next IPCC Report “Runaway growth in the emission of greenhouse gases is swamping all political efforts to deal with the problem, raising the risk of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” over the coming decades, according to a draft of a major new United Nations report.” Read the New York Times report
As the first cohort on the new MSc in Responsible Tourism in the Centre for Responsible Tourism at MMU completes the first module a new cohort is signing up to begin the programme on November 1st. The course is going well with students in UK, Europe and Arabia and the next cohort has students from South America, the South Pacific and Africa. You can see the scope of the course by taking a look at the contents of the first module. The MSc programme is online
At the end of September Richard Branson launched the Virgin businesses’ Sea Mammals Pledge they will “only continue to work with suppliers that pledge to no longer take sea mammals from the wild.” This has been criticised by, amongst others, the World Cetacean Alliance. They counter that Virgin is merely reaffirming its original pledge issued in February 2014, and stating that it will no longer do business with individual suppliers that do not sign the pledge, thereby agreeing not to acquire dolphins directly from the wild on or after February 14, 2014. However, the pledge does not require the termination of captive breeding programs, and makes allowances for acquisition from the wild for rescue, emergency relocation, or species conservation purposes. WCA
For some of the background read more
One day conference in Manchester 7 November 2014, 9.30pm–4.30pm – focusing on Tourism, Retail and Air Transport. Harold Goodwin of the Centre for Responsible Tourism and Michael Ball analyst & consultant will be talking along with Graham Heyes & Callum Thomas of the Centre for Aviation, Transport and the Environment. Details here
11th March 2015, Radisson Blu Hotel, Golden Lane, Dublin This full day event will see a wide range of national and international speakers, all industry leaders, discussing topics around the theme of 'Achieving Change'. This conference will be the 9th International Conference on Responsible Tourism in Destinations and will be co-chaired by James Chilton (Irish Centre for Responsible Tourism) and Professor Harold Goodwin (Manchester Metropolitan University and International Centre for Responsible Tourism). More
Carbon Clear assessed the best practice carbon reporting processes, strategy and performance of FTSE 100 companies, by scoring publicly available information from each company in the FTSE 100 against 67 reporting criteria. The details of what TUI has done to reduce its carbon footprint is available online.
Jeremy Smith has produced an annotated list of good places to discuss issues related to responsible tourism with active, thoughtful, respectful users. As with everywhere online, they have their good days and bad, sometimes discussions take fire, sometimes they get ignored. And they get spammed from time to time. link
The “World Symposium on Climate Change Adaptation” will focus on “innovative approaches to implement climate change adaptation”, and will contribute to the further development of this fast-growing field. Would you like to contribute? More
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Irish Responsible Tourism News #6
peopleandplaces Spring Newsletter
WTM Responsible Tourism Newsletter
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Adama Bah is fund raising to build a home for the Institute of Travel and Tourism of The Gambia and the ICRT West Africa - he has the land, now he needs to raise the money to build it. Details of the build can be found here.
