CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

COFN­IDEN­TIAL Form­al Board Paper 4 10 Septem­ber 2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

CON­FID­EN­TIAL: FOR DECISION

Title: PRO­POS­AL TO SIGN THE TOUR­ISM DECLARES INITIATIVE

Pre­pared by: MUR­RAY FER­GUSON DIR­ECT­OR OF PLAN­NING AND PLACE

Pur­pose This paper sets out the back­ground to the Tour­ism Declares (a cli­mate emer­gency) ini­ti­at­ive and presents the rationale behind CNPA sign­ing it now as a demon­stra­tion of the organisation’s aware­ness of the cli­mate emer­gency and com­mit­ment to lead a pro­gramme of appro­pri­ate action, along with part­ners, for the Nation­al Park. The pro­pos­al has been dis­cussed with rel­ev­ant part­ners and through the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship. The paper is con­fid­en­tial to allow us time to man­age com­mu­nic­a­tion issues and to present a uni­fied approach with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship who are also cur­rently con­sid­er­ing sign­ing the Declaration.

Recom­mend­a­tions That the Board: a) note the inform­a­tion about the Tour­ism Declares ini­ti­at­ive and the dis­cus­sions that have taken place with part­ners to date; b) note the inten­tion of the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship to sign the Declar­a­tion; and c) agree to sign the declar­a­tion on behalf of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

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PRO­POS­AL TO SIGN THE TOUR­ISM DECLARES INI­TI­AT­IVE – FOR DECISION

Stra­tegic Context

1. Tour­ism Declares is an industry-led ini­ti­at­ive to take action to address cli­mate change. The ini­ti­at­ive sup­ports tour­ism busi­nesses, organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­als in declar­ing a cli­mate emer­gency and tak­ing pur­pose­ful action to reduce their car­bon emis­sions as per the advice from The Inter­gov­ern­ment­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) to cut glob­al car­bon emis­sions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030. Fur­ther inform­a­tion is avail­able at https://​www​.tour​is​m​de​clares​.com/

2. The ini­ti­at­ive was foun­ded in Janu­ary 2020 and is based on a com­bin­a­tion of factors: that the com­plex nature of the tour­ism industry; its cli­mate impacts (espe­cially through avi­ation); and its poten­tial for pos­it­ive influ­ence and trans­form­at­ive change, all neces­sit­ate the cre­ation of an industry-spe­cif­ic, cli­mate emer­gency ini­ti­at­ive. The need for this approach has become even more urgent as the tour­ism industry looks to recov­er, re-ima­gine and renew from the COV­ID-19 crisis.

3. The ini­ti­at­ive now has over 300+ mem­bers – all are com­mit­ted to align with the need to cut emis­sions in half by 2030, and pub­lish Cli­mate Action Plans. A full list of mem­bers can be seen here https://​www​.tour​is​m​de​clares​.com/​w​h​o​-​h​a​s​-​d​e​c​lared

4. The ini­ti­at­ive is aligned with over­arch­ing Race to Zero cam­paign which is the glob­al cam­paign (United Nations Cli­mate Change) to rally lead­er­ship and sup­port from busi­nesses, cit­ies, regions, investors for a healthy, resi­li­ent, zero car­bon recov­ery that pre­vents future threats, cre­ates decent jobs, and unlocks inclus­ive, sus­tain­able growth. Fur­ther inform­a­tion is at https://​unfc​cc​.int/​c​l​i​m​a​t​e​-​a​c​t​i​o​n​/​r​a​c​e​-​t​o​-​z​e​r​o​-​c​a​m​paign

5. Scot­land has been described by Tour­ism Declares as lead­ing the field inter­na­tion­ally in this import­ant area of work regard­ing the tour­ism industry and cli­mate change. Scot­land is already very well rep­res­en­ted with­in the sec­tor – includ­ing nation­al and region­al des­tin­a­tions organ­isa­tions, cer­ti­fic­a­tion com­pan­ies, res­taur­ants, vis­it­or attrac­tions, tour oper­at­ors, etc. Vis­itScot­land signed the Declar­a­tion in Novem­ber 2020, along with SailScot­land and Wild­Scot­land, and was the first nation­al tour­ism des­tin­a­tion organ­isa­tion to do so. The Glas­gow Con­ven­tion Bur­eau is the only region­al des­tin­a­tion to sign up in Scot­land so far.

6. The organ­isa­tion Tour­ism Declares sup­ports the organ­isa­tions who have signed up, and this area of work gen­er­ally, in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways, for example:

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1. Organ­isa­tions singing up to Tour­ism Declares must com­mit to the fol­low­ing five actions: a) Ensur­ing align­ment and con­sist­ency between inter­na­tion­al, nation­al and region­al approaches – for example, by align­ing sec­tor plans on five shared path­ways to Net Zero b) Advising on issues such as Meas­ure­ment, Decar­bon­isa­tion, Regen­er­a­tion, Col­lab­or­a­tion and Fin­ance c) Advising on Cli­mate Action Blue­prints – for Des­tin­a­tions, Tour Oper­at­ors and Accom­mod­a­tion at COP26 to help sec­tors cre­ate Cli­mate Action Plans aligned with Glas­gow Declar­a­tion path­ways d) Coordin­a­tion of an expert work­ing group e) Organ­ising Cli­mate Action Work­shops – with NEC­S­TouR, Future of Tour­ism and Ore­gon to enable Cli­mate Action Plans aligned with the Declar­a­tion. f) Cli­mate Action Cer­ti­fic­a­tion – work­ing with Green Tour­ism Glob­al Des­tin­a­tion Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Index and Fair Trade Tour­ism to embed aligned Cli­mate Action Plans in cer­ti­fic­a­tion criteria.

2. Devel­op­ment of a ​‘Cli­mate Action Plan’ To be adop­ted by the rel­ev­ant exec­ut­ive board* with­in 12 months of ini­tial declar­a­tion, or soon­er if possible.

3. Share their com­mit­ment and pro­gress pub­licly Share the ini­tial pub­lic declar­a­tion, the ​‘Cli­mate Action Plan’, and update on pro­gress against your tar­gets each year.

4. Cut car­bon emis­sions Accept cur­rent IPCC advice stat­ing the need to cut glob­al car­bon emis­sions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030 to keep the plan­et with­in 1.5 degrees of warm­ing. Ensure that the ​‘Cli­mate Action Plan’ rep­res­ents actions designed to achieve this as a min­im­um, through deliv­er­ing trans­par­ent, meas­ur­able and increas­ing reduc­tions in the total car­bon emis­sions per trip arising from your oper­a­tions and the travel ser­vices sold*.

5. Work togeth­er Encour­age sup­pli­ers and part­ners to make the same declar­a­tion; share best prac­tice amongst peers; and act­ively par­ti­cip­ate in the Tour­ism Declares community.

6. Advoc­ate for change

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Recog­nise the need for sys­tem change across the industry to accel­er­ate a just trans­ition towards car­bon-free tourism.

• Tour­ism Declares recog­nises that not every­one work­ing in tour­ism has a com­pany board or sells products. For sim­pli­city every­one is encour­aged to sign this one declaration.

Why sign the Declar­a­tion now?

1. It is timely for CNPA to move towards sign­ing the Declar­a­tion at this time because: a) We are at a key stage of pre­par­ing the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) which will set out the policy and actions of the man­age­ment of the Park up to 2045. The approv­al and deliv­ery of the NPPP would ful­fil the func­tion of the Cli­mate Action Plan that is required by Tour­ism Declares. b) In March 2021 the CNPA agreed to ​‘Approve a com­mit­ment for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park to achieve net zero emis­sions by 2045 at the latest and to review that times­cale in light of planned car­bon budget work in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ and include in NPPP.’ The Tour­ism Declares is in line with this decision already taken by the Board for the CNP to achieve net zero by 2045 at the latest. c) The inform­al con­sulta­tion on the Park Plan has already shown there is con­sid­er­able enthu­si­asm for action to address cli­mate change in the Park – for example, 92% of respond­ents said it was either import­ant or very import­ant that indi­vidu­als, com­munit­ies, busi­nesses and oth­ers took action to tackle cli­mate change. d) In dis­cus­sion with part­ners, and through the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship, there is enthu­si­asm for us sign­ing the Declar­a­tion now as way to demon­strate our lead­er­ship in the field in Scot­land in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. e) The suc­cess­ful fund­ing bid to Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­gramme of the Pro­ject ​“Cairngorms 2030: People and Nature thriv­ing togeth­er” has secured the fin­an­cial com­mit­ments and part­ner sup­port to deliv­er very sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gramme of activ­ity over the next sev­en years. f) It would be timely to sign now, in advance of COP26 in Glas­gow in Novem­ber – the Cairngorms Nation­al Park would be one of the very first region­al tour­ism des­tin­a­tions in Scot­land to do so.

Part­ner Support

1. The pro­pos­al was dis­cussed by the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship in August 2021. There was strong sup­port, as noted above. Two key points stood out from the dis­cus­sion. First, it was noted that this approach, of show­ing lead­er­ship in a com­plex field where change was required, was exactly the sort of role that was expec­ted of Nation­al Parks in Scot­land and the role which we should ful­fil. Second, there was

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enthu­si­asm not just to sign the Declar­a­tion and for it to be a paper exer­cise, but for this new approach to help prompt and deliv­er real change on the ground in the way in which tour­ism activ­ity is conducted.

1. The Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship are also cur­rently dis­cuss­ing sign­ing the Declar­a­tion with their mem­ber­ship. The rel­ev­ant CBP Board meet­ing to decide on this mat­ter is on 8 Septem­ber and so, by the time of the CNPA Board meet­ing, their form­al pos­i­tion will be known. It is pro­posed that we make a joint announce­ment about sign­ing the Declaration.

Implic­a­tions

1. There are no dir­ect fin­an­cial implic­a­tions for CNPA of sign­ing the Declar­a­tion. There is no fee and the deliv­ery expect­a­tions are already in line with planned work on deliv­er­ing the Cor­por­ate and Nation­al Park Plans.

2. The present­a­tion­al implic­a­tions are entirely pos­it­ive we have made the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment spon­sor divi­sion aware of our inten­tions to sign the Declar­a­tion in advance of COP 26.

Next steps

1. The next steps are to sign the Declar­a­tion share the news with oth­ers. Appro­pri­ate mater­i­al will be uploaded to CNPA web­site and ref­er­ences inser­ted into the Draft Park Plan. Look­ing for­wards, activ­ity will be repor­ted back via the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship and the CNPA Board.

CNPA Ist Septem­ber 2021