At the World Travel Market fair in London, the Global Institute for Climate Friendly Travel SunX, attracted interest from several stakeholders in the aviation and tourism industry, whereas this institute, based in Malta, together with the Ministry for Tourism and the Malta Tourism Authority, organised a session for those present at the fair about the realities and plans that the institute is offering with regards to climate change.
The Ministry for Tourism had taken the lead in setting up the Global Institute for Climate Friendly Travel in collaboration with SunX, and this institute has now continued to grow. Through the initiative, Minister for Tourism Konrad Mizzi, who was present in London and addressed the audience, emphasised that the Ministry will work with stakeholders across the travel and tourism sectors to propose and implement climate-friendly measures. This will enable our industry to be proactive in forging pragmatic solutions, which will reduce our carbon footprint whilst recognising that travel is beautiful.
Minister Mizzi added that the Ministry for Tourism and SunX are now working on a dynamic, blockchain technology-enabled repository, with which global companies and local organisations will measure their travel carbon footprint.
Professor Geoffrey Lipman, co-creator of SUNx, added that, “There are known challenges in transformation – including the complexity of long-term targeting, the problem of aviation to find a synthetic, non-carbon emitting fuel, the enormity of absorbing new innovation technology, as well as the need to prepare future generations of travel companies and travellers themselves.” He said that SUNx Plan for our Kids would develop support tools and mechanisms to help this transformation, and would seek to instil the concept of climate friendly travel into industry and government decision-making processes.