Apologies for note being able to stay for longer.  The trouble with having a conference on your home patch is that you cant avoid the demands on your time by pleading absence.

The issue of tourism and climate change is a complex one. It is hugely difficult to strike the right balance when we face a clash of priorities.  Yes, people today are far more conscientious when it comes to recycling. We wash our clothes at 40 degrees and we use energy saving light bulbs. But we still like to explore new countries. We like to visit family in far flung places. It isn’t possible to go to Australia or India in any reasonable timescale by any other means than by air.

And of course business travel which is so important to our industry and to the prosperity of our national economies also involves air travel

It is absolutely not for the Government to deny people the right to travel or to deny the industry the opportunity to respond to that demand for travel. So we face the very difficult task of trying to square the circle between people’s desire to travel and the opportunities this brings, the need to reduce and minimise the adverse impacts of aviation use and indeed growth.

Climate Change

You don’t need me to tell you that climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing the world today.  The scientific evidence is clear. It is happening now and it is largely down to human activities to how you and I, all of us choose to lead our lives. 

In the UK, all the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1990 and we have just experienced one of our wettest summers. That caused serious flooding in South Yorkshire the South West Midlands at the start of our peak tourist season.  And the poor weather did not help us grow our domestic visitor numbers in the way we would have liked.

These events give a taste of the sort of things we can expect under a changing climate. More extreme weather events, differences in seasonal rainfall patterns, hotter summers and warmer winters.

And people travelling around the world, jetting off on holiday contributes to climate change. The tourism industry fuels around 5% of global C02 emissions. And it is often at the sharp end of bad publicity about the effects that flying, for example, has on the climate. But for every negative news story, there should be a positive one too because a lot of work is being done by the tourism industry to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and the industry’s carbon footprint.

Last year we in the UK published the Stem Report on the Economies of Climate Change.  A key conclusion of this authoritative piece of work was that the costs of tackling climate change today are lower than the long term costs and effect on our economies and our societies if we fail to act today.

And there are very strong grounds to be optimistic that we can tackle climate change. Practical solutions and technologies already exist to help.

I know from my previous job, as a Minister at the old DTI, I had responsibility for the aerospace sector – how hard that industry is working together with the best brains in our universities to find ways to reduce emissions from air travel.

Of course it’s a huge challenge. But it is also a huge opportunity for the tourism industry and for all of us. It’s an opportunity to create new jobs in for example, the sustainable energy sector; to address energy security; for our economy to become more productive as it becomes more energy efficient; and to improve quality of life as we find less polluting ways of getting around.

I am convinced and I am sure all of you would agree that a low carbon economy is vital for the well being of this generation as well as for our children and grandchildren.  If we don’t act to reduce carborn emissions we risk enourmous and economic damage to the world

But what we can’t do is act in isolation. Climate change is a global issue that demands a global response with richer nations, such as the UK taking a lead. That’s why it’s so very important to be having this debate here today.

The UK Response

And I’m proud to say that the UK is taking a lead. The Stern report was the first to highlight the potential economic damage to the economy if we fail to act now. And the Climate Change Bill which we recently published introduces a clear, credible, long-term, legally binding, framework for the UK to achieve its goals of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

We also have a long-standing commitment to tackle the climate change impacts of aviation and to place the industry on a more sustainable footing for the future. A key cornerstone of this strategy is to push for aviation’s inclusion in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme as soon as possible – a move supported by the UK aviation industry.

Working with tourism businesses

We have also been working hard with our tourism businesses to reduce their impacts on the environment. Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of the carbon emissions in the UK, with non-residential buildings responsible for approximately half of this and we are actively encouraging those who provide accommodation and visitor attractions to take a long hard look at their activities to see how this can be reduced. 

Programmes such as Hospitable Climates gives advice to the hospitality industry on energy efficiency and we encourage businesses to join accreditation schemes such as the Green Tourism Business Scheme. Together, these schemes have led to savings of over 300,000 tonnes of carbon. 

And only two weeks ago the Mayor launched the Green Tourism for London Programme to help London’s hotels, guesthouses, venues and attractions to meet their environmental obligations. 

At the national level, our recently published tourism strategy for 2012 sets out a programme of work to ensure a sustainable approach to tourism. This Strategy outlines a new national framework for England, the production of high-level indicators of sustainability, and ways and means to encourage better sustainable practices in tourism businesses.

We are also helping business to more clearly understand their need to adapt to the inevitable climate change we will experience by past emissions. A new set of climate change scenarios which, for the first time, give users an idea of the likelihood of different outcomes over the next century.

This is a start. We need to do more. The sooner we take action the greater the chance we will have of succeeding tackling climate change and the cheaper it will be.

Economic benefits

But in taking this work forward we must not lose sight of the fact that tourism is a major contributor to economies, especially in developing countries.

In 2006, international tourist receipts totalled 733 billion US Dollars. 

That is important business. What we must ensure therefore is that tourism grows- as it inevitably will –in a sustainable way.

That requires a concerted approach by Government at national and regional level, businesses and visitors - in strategic planning and public policy, in businesses development, and in our own personal lives as we plan our holidays.

Concluding remarks

In conclusion, we believe that the Davos Declaration sets out a very good foundation for the way forward in meeting the challenges posed by climate change. For our part, we intend to use it to inform the new national framework for sustainable tourism that we are developing and the Declaration has already received wide support here at regional and business level. That is very encouraging.

So let us use the Declaration to take the steps we need to both adapt to the challenges of climate change and to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions - and to do that together.

Thank you