Focus on Climate Change and Tourism - Davos

The Human Development Report 2007/2008, published byUNDP in November 2007, tackles the global challenges of climate change. It looks at the impact of climate change on the world's most vulnerableregions and the world's poorest people. Christina Kamp summarises some of the HDR's findings on both mitigation and adaptation.

The reportdraws attention to extreme inequalities in adaptation capacity in rich and poor countries which may create a world of “adaptation apartheid”. It calls for the elimination of “perverse subsidies” and for the taxation on flights and fuel, or the application of cap-and-trade to the aviation industry. With regard to climate change, the World Tourism Organization has undergone a paradigm shift. Sabine Minninger reports from the Second International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism which took place in early October in Davos, Switzerland.

UNWTO acknowledges that the tourism sector is part of the problem of global warming and has to take its share of responsibility in reducing emissions. The conference outcome, the “Davos Declaration”, however, shows a higher level of awareness than the discussions which actually took place at Davos, comments Sabine Minninger. Adaptation to climate change was regarded as more important than the reduction of emissions, and disaster preparedness in poor destination countries was not seen as an issue to be debated at this forum at all.

For more information, see: Human Development Report 2007/2008: http://www.undp.org/ UNWTO Davos Declaration: www.unwto.org/pdf/pr071046.pdf