Supporting Scottish government agencies on tourism industry transition to Net Zero

Climate change is one of the biggest long-term challenges facing the tourism sector globally, and one of the key issues that need acting upon now. Tourism has a key role to play in reducing emissions to Net Zero globally for the benefit of communities, the natural environment, businesses and visitors. Scotland has made bold, and pioneering commitments to do this, and now we are proud to be supporting the tourism sector in Scotland on this challenging but much-needed transition to Net Zero. 

Our ground-breaking work will contribute to strengthening Scotland’s position as the global leader in the tourism sector’s response to the climate emergency. VisitScotland is the first national tourism organisation to declare a climate emergency in 2020, and was a member of the committee which drafted the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism in Nov 2021. 

Now it is time to turn these commitments into practical actions across a range of fronts. We are working with Scotland’s three Enterprise Agencies (Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, South of Scotland Enterprise), VisitScotland and a range of partners to develop a detailed and practical delivery plan to support Scotland's tourism industry on their Net Zero journey. In doing so, we’ll be helping these organisations to address the first commitment made in Scotland’s national tourism strategy Scotland Outlook 2030, a project which TOPOSOPHY was proud to work on in 2019-2020. 

In carrying out this project, we are also pleased to announce that we have partnered with the Travel Foundation, a leading international sustainable tourism organisation on this ground-breaking work. This partnership also reinforces TOPOSOPHY’s strong commitment to support the tourism industry in Scotland and elsewhere on their sustainability and climate action journeys.
 

What are we doing?

• Global benchmarking analysis of climate actions in other destinations and tourism organisations
• Policy context analysis
• Stakeholder interviews (Scottish Government, the Agencies and tourism business)
• Recommendations based on the ‘Glasgow Declaration 
• Action planning stakeholder workshop
• Development of the Net Zero Action plan for Government Agencies 

Although the Net Zero Action Plan project is the first of its kind, this is not our first project in Scotland. During the past five years, Toposophy has worked on several tourism development and recovery strategies for the Scottish tourism sector, including the ‘Scotland Outlook 2030’ National Tourism Strategy and Edinburgh’s 2030 Tourism Strategy, and many more. Read more about our work in Scotland here.