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Global tourism takes a climate-conscious turn as 50+ nations sign a UN pact at COP29 in Baku, pledging greener practices.
BAKU (Reuters) - More than 50 governments have signed a U.N. declaration to make tourism around the globe more climate friendly, the United Nations said on Wednesday, in what it hailed as a major achievement of the climate summit in Azerbaijan.
"At COP29 we have achieved today an historic milestone by being included in the UN Climate Change Conference Action Agenda for the first time," U.N. Executive Director for Tourism Zoritsa Urosevic told a news conference.
The global tourism industry accounts for 3% of global GDP and is the source of 8.8% of greenhouse emissions, said Urosevic.
The countries that signed the declaration on Enhanced Climate Action on Tourism have pledged to recognise the need to address tourism when drafting climate plans, such as their Nationally Determined Contributions. The next update of NDCs, in which governments describe policies to reduce emissions that cause global warming, are due in February.
Tourism often accounts for a large share of a government's hard currency revenues, particularly in emerging countries, and can itself be highly exposed to climate events such as hurricanes, heatwaves and droughts.
"We now understand that the future of our business depends on the sustainability of our actions today," said Kanan Gasimov, head of administration at Azerbaijan's tourism agency.
The declaration was accompanied by a number of other initiatives, such as a framework presented by hotel industry body World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, aimed at measuring and reporting data such as greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, waste and energy usage across the sector.
The collated data would help the tourism industry and travellers understand their impact, said CEO Glenn Mandziuk.
"We are an industry that has a vested interest in the protection of each destination," Mandziuk said on the sidelines of the meeting in Baku. "We have to have a conversation where we can play a bigger role."
The group represents 55,000 hotels totalling more than 7 million rooms and counts big names such as Accor, Hilton and Marriott among its members.
At least 69 people have died and almost 150 injured following a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Cebu City in the central Visayas region of the Philippines, officials said, making it one of the country’s deadliest disasters this year.
A tsunami threat was issued in Chile after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Drake Passage on Friday. The epicenter was located 135 miles south of Puerto Williams on the north coast of Navarino Island.
The war in Ukraine has reached a strategic impasse, and it seems that the conflict will not be solved by military means. This creates a path toward one of two alternatives: either a “frozen” phase that can last indefinitely or a quest for a durable political regulation.
A shooting in Nice, southeastern France, left two people dead and five injured on Friday, authorities said.
Snapchat will start charging users who store more than 5GB of photos and videos in its Memories feature, prompting backlash from long-time users.
A general strike and mass demonstrations paralysed the southern Tunisian city of Gabes on Tuesday, as tens of thousands of people demanded the closure of a state-run chemical plant blamed for a worsening pollution crisis.
Global investors managing more than $3 trillion in assets have urged governments to halt and reverse deforestation and ecosystem destruction by 2030, according to a joint statement released on Monday ahead of next month’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil.
A team of Argentine paleontologists has uncovered one of the oldest known dinosaurs, a nearly complete skeleton of a long-necked herbivore that roamed Earth 230 million years ago in what is now La Rioja province.
An earthquake of magnitude 6.7 struck Papua province in Indonesia on Thursday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
Five days after historic floods that have killed at least 66 people and damaged 100,000 homes, Mexico is still struggling to provide aid to the worst-affected communities and locate 75 missing individuals, amid growing criticism of the government’s response to the crisis.
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