Low Season Traveller Declares a Climate Emergency
At Low Season Traveller we recognise that whilst there are a great many advantages to travel and tourism such as the protection and preservation of wildlife, natural habitats and both cultural and historical traditions and assets, it is clear that travel poses risks to our natural environment and in many cases is a carbon intensive pursuit.
When we formed Low Season Traveller our aim was to create a partial solution to the growing challenge of OverTourism. To encourage travel at times of the year when communities and their economies most needed the economic support of tourism at a time when they could accommodate tourism without negatively impacting the experience of both the local communities as well as the travellers.
We understand that 8-10% of global carbon emissions are caused by the built environment and that having hotels and other buildings largely unused during low season periods, is not a sustainable use of these resources. As such we will always seek to encourage, promote and market the wonderful low season travel experiences as a key part of our commitment to a more sustainable, fair and ethical travel offering.
We have also believed from day 1 that tourism and tourists should leave a positive legacy in their wake. For this reason we committed to support small, local, community projects in every destination which we will be working with, in order to ensure that our legacy is a positive one for the host communities in each case.
No-one gets to assume the higher ground on the environmental challenges we face today. We are all culpable and no individual nor organisation is guilt free. We recognise the role which we must play to do our part within this challenge and we equally call on others to start making changes to their businesses no matter how small they may seem. The journey of a thousand miles, after all, begins with just a single step.
As such, we are delighted to become a signatory to Tourism Declares, an initiative that supports tourism businesses, organisations and individuals in declaring a climate emergency and taking purposeful action to reduce their carbon emissions as per the advice from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030.
Like all signatories, we have committed to the following five actions:
1. We commit to the development of a ‘Climate Emergency Plan’ within the next 12 months, which sets out our intentions to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade.
2. We commit to publicly share the declaration of our ‘Climate Emergency Plan’, and will update on our progress each year.
3. We accept the current IPCC advice stating the need to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030 in order to keep the planet within 1.5 degrees of warming. We’ll ensure our ‘Climate Emergency Plan’ represents actions designed to achieve this as a minimum, through delivering transparent, measurable and increasing reductions in the total carbon emissions per customer arising from our operations and the travel services sold and promoted by us.
4. We will encourage our suppliers and partners to make the same declaration; sharing best practice amongst peers; and actively participate in the Tourism Declares community
5. We will continue to advocate for change. We recognise the need for system change across the industry to accelerate a just transition towards carbon-free tourism.
We encourage our travel industry partners to please consider also declaring at www.tourismdeclares.com, and follow on @tourismdeclares on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin