Two-weeks of negotiations in November 2015 led to the Paris Agreement. The culmination of 20 years of discussions, concessions and compromises. Is the Paris Agreement an important document to the hospitality industry? Without a doubt. Science-based targets driving the industry decarbonisation efforts are based on the 2°c (1.5°c) threshold as per the agreement.

COP26 in Glasgow will see countries submitting new or updated targets which is an integral component of the Agreement. A good time to take stock of how much (or little) has been achieved since 2015. Despite the pandemic, the International Energy Agency predicts that emissions are on course to surge, reversing the 2020 decline (-5.8%) due to the pandemic [1, 2]. No wonder many are asking: when are we going to get it right? [3].

It is with desperation that reports [4, 5] are published indicating that some large, global corporations with proclaimed climate commitment, are actively impeding stricter legislations (on fuel, carbon etc.) through lobbying. Regulation is a core component (as many argued and discussed here a few months ago: Sustainability-driven legislation: setting the right conditions for hospitality?) to ensuring a level-playing field as it is sending a decisive message that climate emergency must be dealt with, with all tools we have available.

For hotel development and operations, it is a mixed bag which can actually lead to new opportunities. In the bag are the regulatory and transition risks for inefficient assets, imminent carbon market systems for buildings, a decreasing costs of capital for sustainability-driven investment and access to cheaper technologies (e.g. market for photovoltaic).

So from your stance, experience and position, why is COP26 important? Why should our industry care? There has been talk also in this panel (see The (Green) Recovery Imperative: Hospitality Re-Set Or Bouncing Forward?) about post-COVID-19 green recovery. Is this happening and can COP26 foster this somehow?

Willy Legrand
Willy Legrand
Professor at IU International University of Applied Sciences Germany

Strapped for time? Five Pages to be on Top of Climate Issues

COP26 is at our door and it is time to take stock of where we stand and why this next round of talks is important (or not).

The scientific community is supporting the production of one report after the next on the state of affairs with the planetary vital signs from the Dasgupta Review(1) and the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report(2) earlier this year. However, for those strapped for time but still wishing to be on top of our planet's health, a great 5-pages summary is the World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021(3) recently published in BioScience.

16 climate-related variables linked to global human activities are tracked and presented in a set of time-series graphs including per capita meat production, energy consumption, global tree cover loss, per capita CO2 emissions, or fossil fuel subsidies for example. Another set of climate-related responses are presented such as sea level changes, ice mass changes or surface temperature for example.

It is not a surprise that records are being set on many mega issues such as greenhouse gasses concentration, surface and ocean temperature. As discussed before, the drop in carbon emissions during year 2020 (-6.4% compared to 2019(4)) was short lived with emissions being back to the same or even greater levels from 2019(5). The World Meteorological Organization compiled a report(5) with the latest on climate science information and comes to the following conclusion: “The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years” (5).

So, why is COP26 important and why should our industry care?

Without discussing to the obvious (access to a healthy planet for everyone) and without the technicalities behind COP26 (governmental commitment via ratchet mechanism), it's really down to five points:

1. Investors – ESG performance as a standard requirement, accelerated access to green finance market

2. Guests – increased interest in compelling evidence of sustainable actions

3. Employees – a generation with careers that are part of a climate solution (and not climate exacerbation)

4. Owners & Operators – decarbonisation as asset value preservation & risk management to an improved triple-bottom line

5. Governments - increased regulations and availability of decarbonisation incentives

The consequence: we all have a stake in what is happening in Glasgow. However, and independently of the COP26 outcome, the private sector cannot and should not solely rely on government interventions (regulatory or otherwise) to achieve ambitious decarbonisation in the next nine years to 2030.

Ingenuity, commitment and holistic thinking are needed.

Exit the Anthropocene and enter the Symbiocene.

(1) Dasgupta, P. (2021), The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review, London: HM Treasury. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review

(2) IPCC (2021). AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Sixth Assessment Report. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

(3) Ripple, W.J., Wolf, C., Newsome, T.M. et al. (2021). World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021. BioScience, 9, 894–898, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biab079

(4) Tollefson, J. (2021). COVID curbed carbon emissions in 2020 — but not by much. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3

(5) WMO (2021). United in Science 2021. World Meteorological Organization. https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/united_in_science

View all 24 views in this viewpoint