Three UN bosses offer four tips to become a sustainable tourist

The lead­ers, who pos­sibly sat in an office togeth­er brain­storm­ing their best ideas and delib­er­at­ing over their choice of words (but more likely asked a com­mu­nic­a­tions staffer to knock some­thing up for them), were:

• Exec­ut­ive Sec­ret­ary of the UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change Patri­cia Espinosa;
• Sec­ret­ary-Gen­er­al of the United Nations World Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion Taleb Rifai; and
• Incom­ing Exec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or of the UN Envir­on­ment Pro­gram (and Chair of the Organ­iz­a­tion for Eco­nom­ic Cooper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD)’s Devel­op­ment Assist­ance Com­mit­tee) Erik Solheim.

Three UN bosses offer four ways to be a sus­tain­able tour­ist: Patri­cia Espinosa by UNcli­mat­e­change (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr; Erik Sol­heim by Harry Wad (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons; and Taleb Rifai by World Travel & Tour­ism Coun­cil (CC BY 2.0) via Wiki­me­dia Commons

After a long-ish gen­er­al pre­amble, their four pearls of wis­dom were:

1. Com­mit and start read­ing: “Get­ting star­ted can be tricky. There can be hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent sus­tain­able tour­ism stand­ards to choose from. The Glob­al Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Coun­cil has a reli­able guide […] Next, buy the guide­books that give you the inform­a­tion you need on green options in the coun­try, city, com­munity and hotel you plan to visit.”
2. Ask ques­tions: “Ask ques­tions of tour oper­at­ors and des­tin­a­tions about how they man­age water and waste. Do they source fruit, veget­ables and meat loc­ally and have clear and pos­it­ive loc­al employ­ment policies? Are they draw­ing elec­tri­city from renew­ables? Decide where you spend your money based on these factors.”
3. Con­sider your mode of travel: “Fly­ing to and from des­tin­a­tions is more prob­lem­at­ic. While air­crafts are becom­ing more effi­cient, air travel is still one of the most dam­aging modes of trans­port­a­tion to the cli­mate per kilo­met­er traveled. Buy­ing car­bon off­sets […] is the best way to reduce your impact if you have to fly. The U.N. Cli­mate Convention’s “Cli­mate Neut­ral Now” provides advice …”
4. Buy and eat loc­al: “At your des­tin­a­tion, you can sup­port loc­al artis­ans and man­u­fac­tur­ers instead of buy­ing mass-pro­duced souven­irs. You can eat loc­al. When you vis­it nat­ur­al sights, you can ensure you leave no trace.”

So, what do you think? Did the UN bosses (or the com­mu­nic­a­tions staffer) get it right? Did they leave out any­thing import­ant? Would you use these tips when advising a first-time or ignor­ant traveller?

Source: Please vis­it Devex for the full post, the bulk of which may provide more con­text for the four sug­ges­tions presented.