WTTC Collaborating With UNWTO, SHA
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (the Alliance) are collaborating to bring together the public and private sectors in a shared vision to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
The vision sees the global travel and tourism sector supporting and inspiring governments, businesses, and society to implement the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and help to transform our relationship with the natural world.
Signatories to the vision have committed to adopt a nature positive approach to tourism through integrating biodiversity safeguards by reducing carbon emissions, the impact of pollution, the unsustainable use of resources, and by protecting and restoring nature and its wildlife.
The new collaboration follows the WTTC’s release of its ‘Nature Positive Travel & Tourism’ report, which was created jointly with ANIMONDIAL, and focuses on halting and reversing damage to nature so the living world can recover from its current depleted state. This involves minimising ongoing harm and taking positive action to restore nature to produce an overall benefit to biodiversity and help achieve Net Zero.
Almost 150 organizations have signed up to the vision so far including international hotel groups, tour operators, travel agents, destinations, and international wildlife charities.
Julia Simpson, WTTC President & CEO, said: “Travel and nature are intrinsically linked. Millions of people travel to explore nature and feel a connection they cannot get through computer screens. Whether it is hiking to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda or snorkelling at the Red Sea, people want to see the world’s most amazing wildlife first hand. It restores the human soul.”
Simpson continued: “Wildlife tourism creates over $340BN USD each year and supports more than 21 million jobs around the world. Today’s collaboration between WTTC, UNWTO and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, spearheading the sector’s vision to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, shows our commitment to preserve the planet for future generations.”
Go to https://action.wttc.org/vision-for-nature-positive-travel-and-tourism to support the vision.
