Event Discussion: Tracking Our Environmental Impact and Navigating Sustainable Expansion
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) recently hosted a webinar on February 21, 2024, to present its groundbreaking Environmental and Social Research (ESR) framework. This innovative initiative, developed in partnership with Oxford Economics and sponsored by the Ministry of Tourism of Saudi Arabia, offers insights into Travel & Tourism’s environmental and social impacts across 185 countries and various income groups.
The ESR framework provides a detailed analysis of Travel & Tourism’s sustainability impacts and contributions, covering a comprehensive geographic scope, including 185 countries worldwide. It addresses how the Travel & Tourism sector interacts with different economic contexts by analyzing various income groups, ensuring that sustainability strategies are adaptable to different development levels and local realities.
The framework disaggregates the Travel & Tourism sector into key sub-sectors, such as accommodation, transportation, food and beverage, and attractions. This enables targeted analysis and tailored recommendations for environmental and social performance improvements throughout the entire travel value chain.
Moreover, the WTTC’s framework integrates the sector’s contributions and impacts with specific United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), providing a clear mapping of how Travel & Tourism can support global sustainability ambitions. The framework is underpinned by rigorous environmental and social data collection and analysis, measuring factors like carbon emissions, water use, waste management, labor practices, community engagement, and diversity and inclusion efforts.
The WTTC's research framework aims to help governments, businesses, and stakeholders understand Travel & Tourism’s role in fostering sustainable development while minimizing environmental footprints and enhancing social benefits like employment, cultural preservation, and equitable growth.
The webinar also emphasized that this framework connects with ongoing global efforts such as those by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and aligns with broader industry collaborations aimed at advancing sustainability, such as efforts by the Events Industry Council and other bodies promoting net-zero and social responsibility in travel and meetings sectors.
Reports derived from the ESR framework can be found on the WTTC Research Hub, while the data from the ESR framework is available on the ESR microsite. A recording of the webinar, where the ESR framework was presented, can be found below.
This comprehensive research framework represents a major step towards integrating environmental and social responsibility into mainstream Travel & Tourism practices worldwide, making it a pivotal tool for driving the sector’s sustainable transformation on a global scale.
- The WTTC's Environmental and Social Research (ESR) framework, through rigorous data collection and analysis in areas such as climate-change, carbon emissions, and water use, aims to contribute to the Travel & Tourism sector's transformation by aligning with specific United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).
- As the Travel & Tourism sector evolves, the ESR framework offers detailed insights into its impacts and contributions, covering environmental-science aspects such as sustainability, waste management, and labor practices, while also incorporating technology like data-and-cloud-computing to create a comprehensive analysis of the sector's performance across 185 countries worldwide.
