Abandoning the EU habitats directive and nutrient neutrality  The UK had safe water. Then Brexit allowed the Tories to flush away our environmental standards How raw sewage has affected rivers in England and Wales – in maps

Margaret Thatcher’s Speech to United Nations General Assembly (Global Environment) November 8th 1989 listen to the clip  ….. as the British scientist Fred Hoyle wrote long before space travel was a reality, he said “once a photograph of the earth, taken from the outside is available … a new idea  as powerful as any other in history will be let loose” . That powerful idea is the recognition of our shared inheritance on this planet. We know more clearly than ever … that we carry common burdens, face common problems, and must respond with common action. And second, as we travel through space, as we pass one dead planet after…

LONDON — When the pandemic exploded in March, British officials embarked on a desperate scramble to procure the personal protective equipment, ventilators, coronavirus tests and other supplies critical to containing the surge. In the months following those fevered days, the government handed out thousands of contracts to fight the virus, some of them in a secretive “V.I.P. lane” to a select few companies with connections to the governing Conservative Party. To shine a light on one of the greatest spending sprees in Britain’s postwar era, The New York Times analyzed a large segment of it, the roughly 1,200 central government contracts that have been made public, together worth nearly $22…

In the UK we have a fine tradition of gallows humour, defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as “jokes or humorous remarks that are made about unpleasant or worrying subjects such as death and illness.”   Spitting Image was a satirical puppet show which ran on UK television from February 1984 to February 1996.  It was adapted and adopted around the world. more  Dark humour suits the national mood as we go from one fiasco to another. The show ran through the later Thatcher years and the much of the John Major period engine a year before Tony Blair became the prime minister. # Now it is to return to BritBox, Britbox…

 We very much regret that Covid-19 has led to the cancellation of WTM Africa for 2020 The Awards will go ahead and the winners will be announced on April 6th. The presentations will be made on WTM Africa Responsible Tourism Day in 2021  Thank you for agreeing to speak in the RT programme at WTM Africa, we plan to have a very similar programme ay WTM Africa in 2021 – probably with additional panels on resilience.  On a  personal not I would add that I am extremely disappointed not to be visiting Africa in 2020 WTM Africa’s official announcement is below  Best regards Harold  Reed Exhibitions Africa has confirmed that Africa Travel Week, which comprises of World Travel Market Africa and…

It was way back in 1972 that the UN held the first conference drawing attention to man’s reliance on the natural environment and promoting the concept of Sustainable Development. Every 10 years, the world’s nations have come together and passed more resolutions, fine words followed by too little action. In 2006 the Stern Report costed the action that needed to be taken and clearly demonstrated that the longer we delayed action the more expensive it would be, and the more disruptive it would be of our economies and way of life. We delayed action and now face two crises widely seen as existential: climate change and the loss of biodiversity.…

Across the state of Kerala in India tourists can engage responsibly with their hosts. The RT Mission has created many great responsible host-guest encounters. One of the core values of Responsible Tourism is respect between travellers or tourists, the guests, and the host communities. The language of hosts and guests is aspirational, but tourism is a social activity. It is what we make it.  Responsible Tourism is about taking responsibility and recognising that tourism is what we, producers and consumers, make it. The Responsible Tourism approach works best when it engages the consumer, enabling the traveller, the holidaymaker, to have a better experience, and the community to have tourism on…

Travel is becoming a lot more popular among both younger and older generations, and there are some people who live their lives travelling all year round now. It’s important that people move towards more sustainable and responsible traveling and the same goes for people who are travelling with their dogs. Those people who are in a privileged enough to be able to travel, have choices about how to spend their money and make an impact on the area which they are passing though. Whether you are travelling with a large dog such as a Belgian Malinois, or a smaller dog such as a Chihuahua, there are plenty of ways that…

Attracting the Sustainable Visitor 29 Apr 2019, 13:30 – 14:30 ATM Global Stage Language: English This panel discusses the impact of attracting the sustainability-focused visitor, both locally and globally, through various sustainability, eco-tourism and biodiversity initiatives in the UAE. It will also highlight the importance of studying the visitor/tourist demographics that the country aims to attract and how the tourism industry is seeing this movement as an opportunity for growth. In addition, the panel provides an insight into Expo 2020’s aim to be a catalyst for sustainable practices and the partnerships taking place to influence and attract mindful visitors. Moderator Jasmina Popov-Locke Director of Programme and Research Development, Modul University…

Wednesday 10th April 14:30 – 15:15 How can Travel and Tourism best reduce the carbon emissions of our industry? Conference Theatre With high rates of growth, the sector will become a more and more significant as polluters come under increasing pressure from regulators applying the polluter pays principle. The business case for reducing greenhouse gas emissions across all parts of the sector has never been stronger and public awareness of the issue and its consequences is rising. Climate change is happening now with wildfires, heat waves, flooding sea level rise and extreme weather events. The most recent IPCC report reminds us that human activities have caused a 1°C increase on…