NEW UN RESOURCE COMPILES INFORMATION ON TOURISM AND CLIMATE CHANGE

NEW UN RESOURCE COMPILES INFORMATION ON TOURISM AND CLIMATE CHANGE
New York, Sep 6 2007 4:00PM
The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has created an information gathering web resource – displaying data, studies, policy papers, videos and other materials – as part of its effort to combat climate change.

"This service is a contribution to foster the knowledge base and the search for solutions to face the climate challenge," said the agency's Assistant Secretary-General Geoffrey Lipman of the "Climate and Tourism Information Exchange Service. "We have to facilitate information exchange and help build networks which will constitute the true basis for concrete action."

UNWTO has spearheaded the study of linkages between climate and tourism, having convened the first-ever International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism in Tunisia in 2003. The second Conference will be held in Davos, Switzerland, next month.

"The tourism sector has to mitigate and adapt in the face of global warming and explore and put in place more climate-friendly and climate-proof alternatives," Mr. Lipman noted.

Climate change will also be a key topic of discussion at the UNWTO General Assembly in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, in late November, where the agency will formulate suggestions for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's strategy for the upcoming major December summit in Bali, Indonesia.

That conference will seeks to determine future action on mitigation, adaptation, the global carbon market and financing responses to climate change for the period after the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol – the current global framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions – in 2012.
2007-09-06 00:00:00.000

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