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Cavo Sidero and the sustainable tourism debate
Stephanie Draper, March 7th 2008, Projects, Travel and tourism
Sustainable tourism is a controversial subject. And I have been in the middle of controversy this week over the Cavo Sidero project in the North Eastern peninsula of Crete. It was featured in The Guardian this week as an ecological disaster! So why would Forum be working on a project like this?
To date, tourism has a pretty poor track record on sustainability, with a few exceptions. But we don’t think that's a good enough reason to steer clear of the sector. In fact, it's exactly why we want to get involved - to make sure we can all continue to enjoy holidays without causing damage to people or planet.
Cavo Sidero has the potential to showcase sustainable tourism - to show what sustainability looks and feels like and to make it aspirational. We want it to be a model for better holidays - and to use the learning from it to avoid the monstrosities that inhabit much of the Mediterranean coastline today. And let’s be clear here, sustainable tourism is not just about the environment (although that is a priority) it’s about human and social and financial aspects too.
The development is the brainchild of the Abbot of Moni Toplou, a bastion in the local community, who sees tourism as the best way to bring in income and jobs to the area and hence protect it from over-grazing, degradation and the slow death of depopulation (the young are currently leaving to find work elsewhere). He has commissioned The Minoan Group to develop the site. They came to us because they too want to achieve something remarkable that is sensitive to its environment and give something back to the local community.
Being a sustainable development charity we had many of the concerns that are being shared in the media this week. We wanted to know why you couldn’t leave the area as a wilderness; why you would want to build on a Natura 2000 site and what the alternatives were. We also wanted to know if the people who were going to do this were serious about sustainability. So, we thought long and hard and we asked a lot of questions. We read the environmental impact assessment (EIA) - which is extensive. We reviewed the sustainability management strategy. We went to the site and spoke to the Abbott and others about it. Our due diligence is not perfect but we wouldn’t have got involved if we didn’t think that it had real merit from a sustainability perspective.
From our explorations we were convinced that the alternatives were few and far between. The site needed investment to protect its ecological value - the old ‘use it or loose it philosophy’. In our view, having limited development that is controlled by one developer committed to protecting the ecological and archaeological features of the site is far preferable to the incremental development that we think would result otherwise. Uncontrolled building by a number of different players who lack a shared vision of sustainability would mean tourism as usual. We would lose a beautiful site and wouldn’t change anything in the process.
So we’ve engaged. This is clearly a risk for us, but we think that the challenge of sustainable development is so great that at some point you have to stop carping and to get your hands dirty. That’s what Forum for the Future is all about. With their support, we’re pushing the Minoan Group to be even better than their EIA (which is already best practice). To use rigorous sustainable design principles throughout, to have a comprehensive carbon strategy based on the carbon hierarchy (avoid first, then reduce, then replace with renewables, and finally offset as a last resort), to provide benefits to the local population and that’s just for starters.
It’s not easy. This is a challenging site that needs to be handled extremely carefully. But there’s something about Cavo Sidero that makes me think that these challenges will be overcome. Maybe it’s the Abbot’s track record - the wind farm, the renovated monastery, the organic olive oil. Or the Minoan Group’s desire to create something that is sustainable. It might be the beauty and potential of the site itself. What’s clear is that this project makes me optimistic that the clear conscience holiday for the many is more than just a pipe dream.
Slow boats and fast trains
Fiona Bennie, May 19th 2008, Travel and tourism
Overland Heaven is now in full swing and the team at Forum is busy looking at the options available for overland travel to five destinations across Europe.
Most travellers are aware that they should be flying less due to air travel’s substantial contribution to climate change, but in practice this is easier said than done. There are very few ‘easy’ alternatives. As we’re finding out, booking air travel is accessible, quick and relatively simple – so why can’t booking a train or a coach to Seville be just as easy? This is what we’re trying to get to the bottom of through Overland Heaven.
We want to find ways to make overland travel productive, enjoyable and easy to book. We’d like to see travelling overland as the preferable choice over flying, harnessing its advantages such as central departures and arrivals, scenic routes, flexibility, lack of queues and security restrictions… the list goes on. Overland Heaven is all about creating ways to make the journey part of the holiday or business trip, not just a means for getting there.
We welcome any thoughts or insights as to why the travel industry isn't already doing more to promote and sell overland holidays. Are there techical or legal barriers that make overland holidays difficult to arrange? Or is it simply a question of supply and demand? Could the industry do more to create a market for overland holidays? Post your thoughts here.
Tourism 2023 Update
Stephanie Draper, September 2nd 2008, Travel and tourism
This summer is certainly seeing interesting changes to holiday habits. With high oil prices and the credit crunch at the top of the agenda this summer, the holiday industry is going through a challenging period. Whilst many consumers are choosing to spend money more locally, others have elected to stay put for their vacations. Meanwhile, airlines’ profits have shrunk and some have even gone out of business.
But while the downturn is affecting holidays in the short term, the fundamentals of travel are also being challenged.
Over the next few decades the world’s new middle classes will increasingly travel internationally. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, tourist visits are going to double from 800 million now to 1.6 billion by 2020.
This staggering level of growth exposes the tourism industry to a classic sustainable development challenge - increased demands on a limited resource, in this case holiday experiences, be they exhilarating activities or the destinations themselves. The Harvard Business Review translates this into a ‘scarcity of place’.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment tells us that many of the natural resources on which tourism relies are being depleted. And if you also factor in climate change, CO2 emissions and related water scarcity then you have a tourism time bomb.
Given these factors, our latest tourism project, Tourism 2023 could not be more timely. The project aims to help the UK outbound industry and some of its key destinations understand more about their future and be able to plan for it.
Here’s a bit more information on why we, and others, think this project is so important and has such potential to create change. Addressing key challenges and creating a more sustainable tourism industry is an exciting prospect - our first workshop was so popular we had to move it to a bigger location!
Why futures thinking is important
We can’t predict the future. The amount of changes that have taken place even over the last few years, let alone the last 15, show us that it would be foolish to even try. But that does not mean we cannot and should not think about how to prepare for and shape our future. Rather that just reacting to events as they occur, the most successful organisations and industries think in advance what they might be, and how they might respond. Tourism 2023 will explore a range of possible future scenarios for the UK outbound tourism industry. This will help the industry to develop business strategies that can be robust in any future.
Using scenarios for futures thinking was a technique developed during the 1980s by Shell. Crucially, one of the scenarios anticipated the Soviet Union collapsing and the end of the Cold War. This thinking enabled the company to rapidly capitalise on new opportunities during the dramatic events of 1989.
Scenario planning is now used by a large number of governments, businesses and organisations around the world. If you haven’t seen them already, you may be interested in some of the work we did last year with Tesco and Unilever: Retail Futures
The language of sustainable development where assets are protected and enriched for ‘future generations’ – is highly relevant to an industry whose resources are so under threat. Futures thinking is integral to this approach as decisions made on the basis of short-term thinking only, often produce unsustainable results. By asking challenging questions about the long-term, we are forced to consider many of the environmental and social issues which will have dramatic impacts in time to come.
Engaging the industry and creating change
Instead of just responding to trends that threaten our future, we can shape them ourselves and create the change we all want to see. That’s why the Tourism 2023 project includes not only scenarios and an inspiring vision, but also a carefully developed strategy detailing how to get there.
During the project, we will document the wide variety of sustainability initiatives already happening in the industry and highlight the gaps where more needs to be done. Hopefully we’ll achieve consensus and clarity on where the industry wants to be in 15 years time and establish what sustainable tourism looks, sounds and feels like. We can then use this understanding to collectively engage and influence government.
No element of this project should distract from the important decisions needed here and now, but they should help make those decisions more considered and effective in the long-term.
Tourism 2023 is supported by a number of key players – TUI Travel, Thomas Cook, ABTA, The Travel Foundation, Carnival UK, The Co-operative Travel and British Airways. Our other collaborators include tour operators, transport providers, government, destinations, academia, technical specialists, travel media and innovators.
A senior level project Advisory Board is driving the project and taking forward recommendations. Ultimately, the proof will be in results – the project’s ability to inspire and then deliver change in the industry and a more sustainable future.
For more information on Tourism 2023 click here or email Vicky Murray.
Paradise Found
Vicky Murray, October 4th 2008, Projects, Travel and tourism
Was anyone else as shocked as I was to find out that ailing airline Alitalia hadn’t registered a profit since 1999? Yes – 1999! Almost ten years ago! Or how about the speed at which the 3rd largest UK tour operator XL Leisure group went under? Both Alitalia and XL have cited high fuel prices and a sagging economy as the root of their downfall.
There is no doubt that this double whammy has generally taken the tourism industry by surprise – but there are some that have been more prepared than others by taking a more sustainable strategic approach. And as a result, they are in a better position to weather the storm.
Paradise Found, our latest report, is a celebration of this. Focusing on destinations, it demonstrates the imperative for sustainable tourism – for people, planet and profits. The report gives Forum’s take on what a sustainable resort looks like with guidelines on what issues to take into account when developing or refurbishing a destination. The report also includes inspiring case studies showing that it is possible for resorts to become more profitable while benefitting local communities and the environment.
Take Six Senses’ Soneva Fushi resort in the Maldives for example. It is one of a growing number of destinations which are already benefitting from incorporating carbon management into their business. Since starting to manage its energy use in 2006 it has halved its carbon footprint. What’s more it plans to go further by becoming carbon neutral by 2010, offsetting emissions from guest flights, resort travel and operations by building wind turbines in India which are expected to generate more than US$1 million over 20 years. Any surplus will be invested into environmental and social initiatives. This is a leading, sustainable approach to carbon management.
So would Alitalia have survived with a more efficient fleet that reduced its fuel bills? Would XL still be operating if it had managed to come up with innovative, sustainable holiday options for its customers? Who can say? What we do know is that Paradise Found shows that sustainable tourism can be achieved. And another of our projects, Tourism 2023, a multi stakeholder initiative currently underway and due to be released late Spring next year, will help the UK outbound industry and some of its key destinations understand more about their future and be able to plan for it.
In increasingly unpredictable times for the industry, and of course the planet, sustainable tourism has to be the way of the future.
Download Paradise Found here
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