Membership and chairmanship – UNWTO’s Committee on Tourism and Sustainability

The Committee is a subsidiary, technical body of the UNWTO Executive Council. Its principal role is to monitor the implementation of the programme of work under "Sustainable Development of Tourism", assist the Secretariat in said implementation, and report and make recommendations to the Executive Council as well as other bodies of the Organization (UNWTO) as required.

Amongst other, the Committee promotes participation in initiatives like the Global Tourism Plastics Initiative, Glasgow Declaration and other.

The Global Tourism Plastics Initiative unites the tourism sector behind a common vision to address the root causes of plastic pollution. It enables businesses, governments and other tourism stakeholders to lead by example in the shift towards a circular economy of plastics.

The Global Tourism Plastics Initiative requires tourism organizations to make a set of concrete and actionable commitments by 2025: Eliminate problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging and items; takeaction to move from single-use to reuse models or reusable alternatives; move towards 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable; take action to increase the amount of recycled content across all plastic packaging and items used; report publicly and annually on progress made towards these targets.

The Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism was officially launched last year during COP26 with the objective to raise the climate ambition of tourism stakeholders and secure strong actions to support the global commitment to halve emissions by 2030 and reach Net Zero as soon as possible before 2050.

The signatories of the Glasgow Declaration agree on five shared pathways to ensure climate action is aligned across all of the tourism sector: Measure, Decarbonise, Regenerate, Collaborate, Finance.

e.g. Committee is also included in the preparation of UNGA reports; a new request from the UN General Assembly to the UNWTO, i.e. the implementation of UN Resolution GA 73/245, “Promoting sustainable tourism, including ecotourism, for poverty eradication and environmental protection”.

The last edition of the report (75th) was published in December 2020, and an informal discussion on the report took place on 22 October 2020 in New York, with the participation of a representative of the Croatian Mission in New York. Committee on Tourism and Sustainability members were involved and informed during the preparation of the report and negotiations.

e.g. Committee cooperates with the International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories

INSTO is a network of tourism observatories monitoring the economic, environmental and social impact of tourism at the destination level. As of today, 30 observatories belong to the International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories (INSTO) Network: 14 in Asia and the Pacific, 9 in Europe and 7 in the Americas. There are 11 mandatory issue areas where observatories are committed to measure, but also beyond, that are specific which a destination consider relevant.

In 2016, the Croatian Sustainable Tourism Observatory (CROSTO) was established by the Institute for Tourism in cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism and Sport of the Republic of Croatia and is currently one of twenty such observatories in the world operating as members of an international network