Planning for uncertainty in a climate-changing world

Jemima Jewell, July 20th 2010, Climate change, Futures, International

If you were president of an African country with $1.2 billion dollars to spend and a host of challenges – poverty reduction, economic development, health and education – how would you spend it?

In his absorbing book ‘Poor Story’, Giles Bolton challenges the reader to do just this. As you answer the question in your head, Bolton gently probes your answers, unravelling your reasoning and demonstrating just how tough it is to make the ‘right’ decisions when you’re trying to act in the best interests of a country’s ‘development’.

Climate change makes it so much tougher – for governments, donors, aid workers, and businesses – to make the ‘right’ decisions for development, adding a huge dimension of uncertainty to our planet’s future. It’s not just the direct environmental impacts: climate change has the potential to transform the economic, political, social and psychological dimensions of the world we live in. New political alliances, shifting supply chain structures and resource-based conflict are just some of the changes we could see.

Amid such uncertainty, how can we ensure that development decisions taken today continue to deliver benefits in the future?

Our new report The future climate for development attempts to answer that question. It explores some of the radical changes we could see in the next 20 years as a result of climate change, and how low-income countries might respond. Supported by the UK’s Department for International Development, and informed by the insights of more than 100 development experts from around the world, it contains four scenarios – descriptions of different plausible futures – to provide a structured way of working through the uncertainties of a climate changing world.

The scenarios, which we’ve brought to life in four short animations, each highlight a different set of challenges and opportunities that low-income countries could face by the year 2030. ‘Reversal of Fortunes’ describes a world which is attempting to radically decarbonise its economy. Here, low-income countries that have followed the ‘traditional’ development pathway set by high-income countries get the rough end of the deal. They find that the new low-carbon global economy is an unforgiving one, uninterested in those trading partners unable to play the carbon-counting game. Fair?Certainly not, but possible? Surely – and therefore worth planning for.

Another scenario, ‘Age of Opportunity’, paints a more positive picture of 2030. Huge sums of development assistance have, in most countries, triggered a virtuous circle of investment, energy security, business opportunities and community empowerment. In ‘Coping Alone’ a world reeling from the shock of oil at $400 a barrel focuses on regional solutions. ‘The Greater Good’ finds climate change subsumed into a broader debate about resource use.

In these radically different worlds, a recurring theme emerges: the benefits of low-carbon development, be this investment in renewable energy, low-input agriculture or low-carbon cities. In an uncertain world, this is a consistently robust strategy.

Why? Low-carbon development sets up an economy that is fit for the future, shielded from the crushing oil price spikes of ‘Coping Alone’; it ensures a competitive position on a low-carbon world stage in ‘Reversal of Fortunes’; and it’s a vital component of the positive development cycle we see in ‘Age of Opportunity’. This is not a question of ‘limiting’ development by ‘limiting’ carbon emissions, but of focussing on the kind of smart strategies that deliver competitiveness, efficiency and healthier, wealthier communities. Climate change or no climate change, these are surely changes that every country wants to see.

Uncertainty is daunting, but it doesn’t have to be paralysing. By contemplating a variety of different possible futures, you can be better prepared for the unexpected. By testing – and modifying – your strategy in different scenarios, you can be sure that it will continue to deliver benefits. And by identifying initiatives – such as low-carbon development – that address climate change and development goals together, you can ensure that the short-term agenda is dominated by opportunity. All of which gives the best possible chance of each and every ‘development dollar’ being money well spent.

The full report, short films of the scenarios and supporting materials can be downloaded here.

For more information, please contact Jemima Jewell.

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Whistling in the wind? I don't think so

Martin Hunt, July 12th 2010, Futures, Innovation, Leadership

How a Canadian mountain resort became a model of sustainability

Let’s face it, very few of us like Monday mornings, but the beginning of last week was truly a depressing wake-up call for me. I contemplated hiding away under my quilt as the alarm clicked in and BBC radio reeled off the latest on government spending cuts and potential job losses. As the commentators considered what cuts of 20% here and 40% there might mean, I thought of our construction partners as Building Schools for the Future was shelved, and wondered about the prospects for colleagues in local authorities striving to implement low-carbon infrastructure.

But thankfully, my day did get better. I’d organised a Forum network seminar with Ken Melamed, the Mayor of Whistler, to talk about how the Canadian mountain resort community is implementing an ambitious plan to achieve a prosperous and sustainable future. For those of you who don’t know, as well as co-hosting the recent Winter Olympics, Whistler is seen as an exemplar in terms of community planning, with a systems-led approach to sustainable development at its core.

A decade ago the Natural Step framework (http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/the-natural-step) was used to inspire, align and guide the community toward a shared vision of sustainability and success. Ken talked about how Whistler2020 (www.whistler2020.ca) lays out a vision, prioritised strategies and  action planning process – guiding strategic planning and actions over time. There is also regular and transparent reporting on progress. Drawing on local and external knowledge, Whistler2020 informs decision-making, optimises use of limited resources and provides a framework for aligning community efforts in a common direction.

Today, Ken talks about Whistler2020 being a ‘living’ plan, driving ongoing progress, and being informed by community members, including local businesses. And this long-term plan is leading to significant change on the ground. We heard about how they used the Winter Olympics and Paralympics as a vehicle to accelerate the journey the community is on. This allowed them to complete 30 green building projects, to showcase clean technologies and green building techniques, to pilot a hydrogen-fuelled bus transit scheme, and to create hundreds of low-impact, affordable homes.

But the key message for me was the role of strong and pragmatic leadership through good times and bad. It’s clear from talking to Ken that he knows that Whistler is on a journey and it’s taken a lot of time to get all the necessary stakeholders on board. Barriers have had to be overcome, cynics convinced and some trade-offs made. But at the same time, Whistler has not waited for national government to legislate or tax, or for consumers to demand change.

Where feasible they have adopted innovation and piloted new ideas. The community has experimented with new ways to finance projects for the long term, and has restructured the municipal government around five strategic priorities. They have a plan that is now city-led, but community-owned. It is proving to be workable and Whistler’s approach is now being adopted by much larger towns and communities across Canada.

True, Whistler has some way to go before it is truly sustainable, and still faces significant challenges as a tourist destination. But there is a clear appreciation that uncontrolled growth is unsustainable, and that adding value and doing more with the community’s existing infrastructure and resources is the way forward.

Some may argue that Whistler is different from many of our communities here in the UK, but I believe that there are many lessons that we can learn about long-term planning, community engagement, innovation and implementation. Perhaps most importantly, I get the impression that Whistler will not be diverted from the long-term path it has set, and will continue to demonstrate the strong leadership and clear sense of direction which many of our partners should aspire to, even in the most testing of economic times. 

I felt a lot better Tuesday morning.

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Can the creative industries seduce us into sustainability?

Jonathon Porritt, June 16th 2010, Business, Futures, Innovation, Leadership

Shock them? Seduce them? Educate them? All of the above? When it comes to getting people to accept the reality of climate change (and the urgent need to be doing something about it), politicians have got themselves into a bit of a pickle by depending too much on the science.

Scientists would love to think that evidence alone would be sufficient to guarantee people’s buy-in. To their growing horror, however, people’s scepticism about climate change has deepened even as the evidence has hardened.

Bottom line: science alone is not enough. The truth has not set us free. And nor will it.

This is where the Creative Industries can play a vital role. When it comes to shocking, seducing and educating, there’s no limit to the creativity that can be brought to bear on influencing people’s attitudes and behaviour.

Delighting people with new designs for everyday appliances; inspiring them with spirit-lifting music; building empathy with brilliant documentaries; ‘selling’ sustainability through viral marketing; fashioning fair-trade clothing; creating a new ‘app’ to help people make better use of public transport – or even their legs: there’s a wealth of ways to mobilise the talents and resources of all the different sectors that make up the Creative Industries.

But these are not industries that see themselves at the cutting edge of today’s sustainability agenda. Indeed, it’s probably fair to say that the majority of the very large number of SMEs involved have very little awareness of their own sustainability-related performance. Let alone what they should be doing about it.

So Forum for the Future and the Creative Industries knowledge transfer network are setting out to address this. Today we’re launching a nationwide campaign designed to make the sector champions of a sustainable future.

We’ll be working with the industries to examine how the UK’s creative businesses can  use their skills to tackle issues like energy, climate change and social justice and help other sectors innovate. We want to inspire them with new business opportunities and also help them understand the rewards they can reap by improving their own sustainability performance.

Lord Puttnam, the distinguished film producer, will give a keynote speech at our launch event in London where some of the sector’s leading lights will take part in a round-table debate on how the Creative Industries can lead us to a sustainable future. We’ll follow it up with regional workshops where professionals from different parts of the sector can collaborate on how to turn these ideas into reality.

The Creative Industries are a vital part of the UK’s economy, generating almost £68 billion in 2007, and have huge power to change our world for the better. But it’s going to be difficult to ask them to play their part in shocking, seducing and educating the general public unless they first get their heads around the basics.

The round-table debate takes place on Wednesday June 16th and will be streamed live from 4pm at www.creativeindustriesktn.org/live/

Transcripts of the debate and a video of its highlights will be posted after the event on a website where industry professionals can follow the project and debate the issues it raises. http://creativeindustriesktn.org/beacons/pg/groups/689/sustainability/

For more information on the project click here.

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Population - time to face the future

Sara Parkin, June 9th 2010, Futures, General

It’s perverse that in all the debate about how to achieve low-carbon economies that still bring satisfying lifestyles to all, the absolute numbers of people involved get little mention. Certainly not in policy circles.

Yet just as our growing consumption of energy outstrips any gains we make in efficiency so growing numbers of people outstrip gains made in not only energy but also food and water security.

More people make everything more difficult because building extra housing, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure (phones, roads, railways etc.) comes on top of adapting what we have already to cope with the floods and droughts of future climate uncertainty.

Which is why Forum for the Future has brought out a new report: Growing Pains: population and sustainability in the UK. The ONS projects that on current trends UK population will increase by 9 million to reach 70 million by 2030, so we’ve brought forward some of the latest thinking in order to bust a few population myths and to promote sensible conversations about the different choices we face.   

And it looks as if putting the brakes on the UK population might be one of the easier things we could do to achieve a sustainable society– but only if there is an open and constructive discussion about it, plus a deeper understanding of how it is relevant to achieving a wide range of policy goals.  

So, to set the ball rolling, we’ve come up with seven recommendations for policy makers and decision-makers everywhere:

1. Plan for what is coming. Even if lower projections are met, there will be more people in 2030 than now.
2. Use the resources we do use more efficiently.  Massive innovation and opportunities here.
3. Rethink ‘growth’ so it means growth of well-being and quality of life not consumption.
4. Develop new attitudes to ageing.  People living longer and healthier lives is a matter for celebration, and deserves more imagination in the way we all live our lives.
5. Enhance family planning. There is something wrong if a third of pregnancies are unplanned - in the UK and globally.
6. Hold an objective discussion on immigration.  Reclaim the debate from the extremists and address the underlying concerns about jobs, equality, and housing.
7. Have an open and sensible debate.  Population is only controversial because we shy off having a well-informed and thoughtful debate  that brings the topic into mainstream planning for the UK’s future

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Britain in 2010…?

James Goodman, May 21st 2010, Futures

No internet, no mobile phones, no global terrorist threat, but a buoyant economy in which the peace dividend from the end of the cold war continues to fund investment in health, education and international development… these are just some of the features of Britain in 2010 according to a Policy Studies Institute report published in 1990.

The predictions were the result of a serious research effort designed to help policymakers by predicting what the UK might look like in 20 years. In the foreword to the report, Jim Northcott, the principal author, wondered if there would be a conference held in 2010 to discuss what they got right and what they got wrong. I went to that very conference last week.
 
The aims of the ‘Britain in 2010’ report were to provide a best guess of what the next 20 years would hold. While some futurists would throw enough caveats at that to practically bury it, PSI did get quite a lot right.

For example, on the economy, they slightly overestimated growth, but not by much. They seriously underestimated how much imports would grow, and they also underestimated how quickly consumer spending would grow. But they picked up on the inherent instability in the global financial system, albeit without predicting the date and type of system collapse that we (nearly) experienced.
 
They called climate change, which for 1990 isn't bad. I was at school then and active in the local Friends of the Earth group. Climate change was part of the conversation but it wasn't on the campaign list. (I remember dressing up as a giant toilet roll in St Austell’s Fore Street, encouraging people to buy recycled toilet paper.) PSI said climate change would come to dominate political debate and even international relations. They had access to a group of experts - climatologists - who knew something few other people did, and were convinced of its significance.
 
I drew three conclusions from the speeches and discussion at the conference, with implications for how we do our futures work at Forum and elsewhere.
 
Firstly, the report seemed to overestimate the pace of linear or incremental change. Some of the trends already in evidence have taken more time than anticipated to develop. Policy in particular has moved slowly, climate change policy being one example of this: the report authors assumed that once the issue was acknowledged, policy would follow. That’s a bit of a groan moment.

Secondly, and in contrast, non-linear or disruptive change was underestimated or completely missed. For example, the 1990 report predicted two decades of 'important incremental progress' in technology. They considered the internet (which, like climate change, was waiting in the wings in 1990, preparing to jump centre-stage) but didn't anticipate its startling, planet-wide impacts and decided not to include it in the report. Mobile phones likewise are missing from their vision of 2010, as is the emergence of religious fundamentalism and global terror threats.

Thirdly, the study comes across as a good record of the expectations of the future that were current in 1990, rather than a set of accurate predictions. One example of this is how much attention the report gives to the cold war peace dividend – a big discussion point in 1990 which had fallen off the agenda by the mid 1990’s. The report is a valuable historical document showing the concerns of the day, which I think is inevitable: just as our interpretation of history is unavoidably political and coloured by current debates, so futures work always reflects the preoccupations of the present.

One final thought: it's obviously possible to predict and get lucky. I don't want to criticise the rigour with which the study was undertaken, or its value. I reckon their 2010 estimates were about 60% right, which is pretty good. But I do wonder whether they were fortunate with the timeframe they chose. By 1990 the cold war was over and in early 2010 the full ramifications of the financial crisis have yet to be felt. If the study had been conducted in 1980, would they have been so successful? Or, more to the point, would they be so successful if they tried it again today, and tried to predict what 2030 will be like?

Read the original Britain in 2010 report here.

Read about the Forum’s futures work here.

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Fiction made fact: tech goes sustainable

Clare Jenkinson, May 5th 2010, Futures, Innovation

Imagine being able to wave your smart phone across a product and instantly know how much it was contributing to flooding or poverty in Bangladesh. Sounds a bit ‘Minority Report’ perhaps, but it’s already possible to make instant purchasing decisions based on the sustainability credentials of products on shelves. Barcoo, a new phone app allows you to ‘see’ a company’s environmental and social impacts, simply by scanning the on-pack barcode.

At Forum we track ‘weak signals’ like this: ideas, trends, technologies or behaviour changes that are as yet unrecognised by mainstream society. They might have a big impact or they might disappear. We monitor them to help our partners challenge their assumptions about the future, navigate risk and seize new opportunities.

The idea of increased immediate access to product sustainability information driving transparency in business appeared in a recent report we produced with T-labs, Deutsche Telekom's research laboratories. The report, Fiction becomes fact: sustainable information technology in 2020 explores the role that future information communications technologies could play in a sustainable world in 2020.  

Machine to machine communication, augmented reality – allowing additional information regarding people or objects to be displayed, and the ‘internet of things’ – where every manufactured or processed product is trackable and traceable in real-time, are among the technologies that look likely to play a greater role in our lives in 2020.  We helped T-labs think through how the potential of these technologies can be harnessed to drive sustainability.

The project also looked at the emerging implications of these technologies. As more and more information becomes available and is shared, will access to this information about the world around us be universal and act as a social leveller, or will it create a divide?  In terms of personal information, notions of privacy will evolve. There will be more ways that our current version of personal privacy can be breached. It will become more and more difficult for individuals to control what information exists about them and who has access to it. 

And of course, we have the issue of the energy consumption of the technologies themselves. Initiatives like the ICT for Energy Efficiency Forum, where industry players commit to better understand their footprint as a whole and agree on targets in line with or exceeding climate change targets are an important step. 

Ultimately, the aim of this project was to help Deutsche Telekom look ahead to the behaviour changes and technological developments that they want to create and communicate this across the business.  But the work also helps to anticipate some of the future problems so Deutsche Telekom is better positioned to deal with them.  This is the real power of our horizon scanning work, an invaluable tool to help drive the transition to the sort of life we want – and need – in the future.

Find out more about the project or download the full report Fiction becomes fact: sustainable information technology in 2020

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What's in store for city-dwellers in 2040?

Ivana Gazibara, April 26th 2010, Cities, Built environment, Futures, General, Transport

Imagine a world where each morning, you and your family hop in your self-driving hydrogen vehicle. You program your destination into the digital journey planner, and settle into an onboard breakfast around the table, as your h-pod gets you to where you need to go. After dropping the kids off at school, you leave the h-pod to refuel at the local energy hub while you work in the neighbourhood smartoffice, using avatars to connect with colleagues in a virtual conference room. 

Sounds futuristic?  Welcome to Sustainable Urban Mobility: 2040.

In partnership with Vodafone, FIA Foundation and EMBARQ, the Sustainable Urban Mobility: 2040 (SUM2040) project aims to help key constituencies in global cities – including government planners, urban designers, businesses and civil society groups - find long-term, sustainable urban mobility solutions. It does this  by exploring coherent, plausible scenarios of the world 30 years from now.  By mobility, we mean transport but also the other means of access to goods and services people need in daily lives that may act as a substitute for physical movement – from ICT, to different ways of urban design.

We’re now halfway through the project and at a point where we’ve done extensive research and consulted a wide range of experts and the insights that have come out have been fascinating. Before the scenarios for mobility in 2040 are written and published, I wanted to share some top-line thoughts about how your city might look in the future.

People-friendly cities:  The concept of cities designed for people, not cars, will grow.  What does this mean in practice? Urban design focused on developing local neighbourhoods as opposed to more urban sprawl, for a start. People will increasingly choose to live, work and play in the same area.  The local street will undergo a renaissance, with small shops popping up again, more footpaths, more green space, and efficient, 24-hour use of community infrastructure, such as the local school doubling as a community centre after hours.   

Mobility-on-demand:  When people do venture out of their neighbourhood, they will probably be able to connect much more smoothly and quickly between different modes of transport. They’ll check air quality or traffic conditions on their mobile, laptop or using public access touch screens before setting out. Far fewer people will need to own vehicles – they’ll be able to rent cars, electric scooters, bicycles and other modes at mobile rental hubs that can easily be shifted around the city in response to changes in demand.

The changing shape of the office:  In the 20th century, we got stuck in traffic jams every morning while commuting to head office. Experts expect this to change. We are already seeing more home working and video conferencing. This trend will grow and fundamentally change the way office spaces look and feel. Companies will likely build smaller, decentralised working centres. They may even use existing neighbourhood infrastructure – from the local coffee shop to the community centre – for flexible working arrangements. 

The wired automobile:  The car itself will be transformed.  Manufacturers are already thinking about how to incorporate ICT into vehicles, and odds are that over the next 30 years we will see this trend become much more mainstream.  Expect, more information and entertainment; automated navigation that supersedes bad driving for optimized safety; and cars that are able to communicate with other vehicles on the road.

Inclusive mobility:  Thirty years on, we will still have significant low-income populations, for which tailored mobility solutions will be designed, enabling a greater degree of access to goods and services and more employment opportunities.  The mobile phone penetration in the developing world has already shown us the potential of ICT to enhance mobility for the poor, by providing an affordable, quick way to connect to the market by phone rather than on foot, and by allowing delivery of previously inaccessible services such as banking.

Partnerships redefined:  As the sustainability challenges facing cities grow, and traditional ways of operating become more and more difficult, we will increasingly form hybrid value chains - business models where commercial partnerships are established between businesses and citizen sector organizations (e.g. NGOs) in order to transform markets and meet critical human needs. Government, business and civil society will likely be working together in much more creative, collaborative ways than ever before.  This could include handing over areas of governance to local NGOs and outsourcing operations to local businesses.  Nothing we haven’t seen before – but odds are we’ll be seeing more of it in the future.  

Needless to say, this will not play out across the board. We are exploring different pathways for these trends and the corresponding societal responses through our scenarios. These will be shared shortly our workshops in Mumbai and Istanbul this June, and published in the autumn. We will be sharing updates as we go along, so stay tuned for more!

http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/sustainable-urban-mobility

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Fashion's sustainable future brought to life in new Forum project

Fiona Bennie, February 24th 2010, Futures, Retail

Coco Chanel once said, “Fashion is made to become unfashionable.”
So how can an industry become sustainable when the ‘we loved it, but now we shun it’ cycle is embedded so deeply? Do we have to change everything we love about fashion to make it a sustainable, fair industry? Not necessarily.

Last night, amid the glamour and excitement of London Fashion Week, we held a drinks party with Levi Strauss & Co., to launch our joint report Fashion Futures which explores the world of 2025 and the role of the fashion industry within it. More than a hundred fashion industry folk turned up to hear about our four vivid scenarios and view the animations, which bring them to life.

Follow this link to find out what kind of worlds might see cities inundated by second-hand department stores; high-street brands competing on sustainability credentials; people partying in biodegradable, spray-on outfits; and regions where grow-your-own clothing is popular.

We created the scenarios to help companies around the globe navigate the ever-changing challenge of developing sustainable businesses. They compel us to mull over big questions we wouldn’t usually consider when thinking short-term. Like how the industry will react to shortages of cotton and other raw materials – or how people will care for their clothes in a future of water shortages and high energy prices – which raises deeper questions like whether current business models will survive in a retail market that’s very different from today.

We have deliberately avoided making Fashion Futures a read-it-then-shelve-it report. We want companies of all shapes and sizes, from all corners of the globe, to use the four scenarios. We want them to be inspired, perhaps even a little scared by some of them, but hopefully motivated to think differently about the future and excited by the idea that a sustainable fashion industry is achievable.

To this end, we’ve published some workshop materials on our website with advice on how to use the scenarios to shape strategy, push for sustainable design and innovation and generate the skills needed for a sustainable industry.

And we’ve brought the scenarios to life with four powerful two-minute animations, which show just how different they are, and how much a sustainable future depends on us taking bold action today.

Fashion Futures has already been put to practical use. Our project partner, Levi Strauss & Co. is using the scenarios internally, to inform strategy and innovation. As Michael Kobori (pictured), LS&Co’s Vice President of Social and Environmental Sustainability said at the launch party yesterday, "These scenarios are so stimulating, we will be sharing them with senior management to inform our broad strategies, with designers to spur them to create more sustainable products, and with all employees to unleash the power of our entire company to think about sustainability."

And we’ve used them to help fashion students understand how to design for the future, working with the great team at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion. Four groups of students from the 2009-10 MA Fashion and the Environment – a diverse and enthusiastic bunch from all over the world - spent their autumn term living and breathing one of the Fashion Futures scenarios, creating new ideas and businesses that would thrive in such a world. They not only produced some great, thought-provoking concepts, which are illustrated in our report, but they also helped us shape the scenarios at one of the critical stages of development.

So this is the beginning of an exciting journey. We’re looking forward to helping our partners and others use the scenarios and we’re excited to hear how other organisations will use them in innovative ways.

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Messages from the future

James Goodman, January 25th 2010, Futures

What do new types of plastic, a recession-proof solar boom in California and resurgent UK regional accents have in common? Or high-street butchers, energy rationing and the emergence of a ‘recession generation’?

They could all be ‘weak signals’ from the future – signs of what may be to come. If you’re into sustainable development and planning for the future, then weak signals are important.

For example, a couple of years ago we noticed that the Australian Outback had been closed to protect tourists from the extreme heat. This struck us as something that could become more common in the future as the climate changes, and that could have a big impact on the tourism industry. So we built the idea into one of our Tourism 2023 scenarios which are helping the tourism industry plan for its future.

Some weak signals may be a harbinger of precisely nothing. Some may reappear years or even decades later. But others may grow progressively stronger, and even become part of a mainstream trend that plays a significant role in defining the future. They may hold implications for your organisation, your community – or even you personally.

We’ve been tracking weak signals for a couple of years, and now we’re making them public. Click here to have a look, or follow the beautifully designed ‘weak signals’ link on the right hand side of our home page.

You can learn about the obesity plateau in the USA, a 100% solar town in Uruguay, the phenomenon of bee-rustling, remote-control gardens and much more. Reading about these weak signals might just challenge some of your assumptions about what the future holds.

The blog is updated regularly so we hope you’ll find something new each time you check in. Please tell us what you think. Are we uncovering new trends? What could they mean for the prospects of a sustainable future?

By the way, you can read more about what weak signals are and how we use them, along with plenty of examples, in Hugh Knowles’s article for Green Futures.

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Mark Ellingham: Air travel must help cut CO2

, October 12th 2009, Futures, Transport, Travel and tourism

Hurrah for Tourism 2023, airing so many issues that have been engaging so many of us involved in the travel industry. Is a travel industry sustainable? Can it in some way clean up its own act, or at least clean up its own CO2 emissions? And if climate is changing apace, what on earth might be in store?

I came into the travel industry in the early 1980s, when I set up Rough Guides. Although back then I must say that I hadn’t thought of travel, at least not its independent wing, as an industry. At Rough Guides we were just writing books to inform people about the countries they visited, while most of the small, independent operators we dealt with were enthusiasts first, business folk second, and often driven by a passion to get involved with destinations and communities where they felt strong bonds.

Nor had I thought very much about the travel industry’s effect on the environment, beyond the sorry over-development of mainstream resorts. For back in the 1980s, there wasn’t much observable effect in many of the countries we covered: even in countries like Peru or India or Morocco, where tourism is today a significant part of the economy. And crucially, there was no popular perception about climate change, or about the role aviation emissions play.

When a year or so ago, I was asked to take part in the discussions out of which Tourism 2023 was shaped, the landscape was altogether different. Although I had by then left Rough Guides, to set up an environment imprint for Profile Books, I had a sense of guilt, almost a feeling of shame, about having been a part of the travel industry for so long. And I think that sense is shared, in rather perplexed fashion, by much of the industry. Certainly among the independent travel sector, the sector I know best, which is populated on the whole by thoughtful souls, who care deeply about the countries where they organise trips and tours. People and companies who for many years have been trying to ensure that their brand of tourism puts something back into local communities, by encouraging genuinely local development, supporting local infrastructure, and often putting money into aid projects in areas they know there will be real benefit.

Which is why I think Tourism 2023 is so important – and why it is so good that it has had partners like ABTA and British Airways involved. We need to make sure that the future of travel becomes positive, delivering benefits to the communities we visit. And, crucially, we need to somehow find a golden bullet to make tourism a “low carbon, low impact industry” as the report sets out as a primary aim. That is a vision we must all advance. And perhaps it is one that tourism actually can deliver, to show other sectors the way forward. Aviation, of course, is the key, as an area that is currently unsustainable in its contribution to carbon emissions, and is potentially disastrous if it grows as governments predict.

We need an industry that sets out its store: to remove every gram of CO2 that we emit. Better than that: why don’t we set out to remove twice as much CO2 as we emit? Turn tourism into an industry leader in removing emissions.

There is enough money in the industry to make this happen, and there is evidence that the technology to do so is emerging. Klaus Lackner, at Columbia University, has developed a working prototype of a carbon scrubber that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere, anywhere in the world.  If his technology were to go into production right now, Lackner estimates that it would cost around $200 to remove each ton of CO2. Some travellers would be happy to pay that cost today. But with mass production, Lackner estimates a CO2 removal cost dropping to around $35 a ton. That would add a very manageable extra cost to flights: $50 on a return flight from London to New York, $10 for London to Madrid.

We need to apply the pressure to make that happen – urgently.

Mark Ellingham co-founded Rough Guides and currently runs a green and ethical publishing list for Profile Books. He is a member of the Tourism 2023 Steering Committee.

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