Top-down approach a recipe for failure

The reasons for the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Change summit have uncanny similarities to the reasons for the failure of the Pata “CEO Challenge” organised by Pata in April 2008, an event that was supposed to highlight the role of travel and tourism as a solution to the climate change problem.

Amongst many other reasons, both events failed because they sought to offer a top-down approach in which western governments, corporations and executives were positioned as being a “part of the solution” without taking responsibility for being an intrinsic “part of the problem” as well.

Held in April 2008, the Pata CEO Challenge was designed to replace the Pata annual conference, once the primary event on the Asia-Pacific travel industry calendar and a contributor of sorts to Pata coffers. It was built around the theme of climate change and what the industry needs to do about it.

As Pata has been focussing on the environmental issue since the 1990s, the idea itself was nothing new. What made it worse was the top-down elitist approach which recruited mainly CEOs while many of the sessions were closed to the media.

Due to the high registration fees, and the preoccupation with other industry downturn-related issues at the time, the conference failed to deliver either in terms of outcomes or participation.

At the media conference, the then president and CEO of Pata, Peter de Jong, was asked by TTR Editor Don Ross about the lack of an Asian presence.

His reply at the time: “The awareness of the importance of the climate change issue for industry, it’s fair to say, is perhaps a bit further advanced in the European and American markets and in the Australian and New Zealand markets. There is more pressure there from the consumer on this issue. There is more research and intelligence than currently exists in Asia. This is one of the reasons why we wanted this to come to Asia to make sure that whatever best practises or learning curve that is there, are shared with or made available to Asia Pacific region as a whole.

“So you are right to suggest that in terms of member states, there were not perhaps as we might not have been as we liked. There will be more (in future) as the learning curve has been fast. But I remind all of us that the companies which were in the sessions all have Asia-Pacific responsibilities.

“So whether the nationality of the CEOs or their ethnicity may be wanting, it’s important that it should represent (like) Accor Asia-Pacific, that you are a regionally important player, and an operator in the Asia-Pacific. Or if you are Banyan Tree, no matter who represents you, you really are an Asian-based or Asian-centric company. So (there was) quite a bit of Asian participation regardless of who has put a face on that.”

This same top-down approach was reflected in the Copenhagen climate change conference which flopped partially because developed countries sought to take minimum responsibility for causing the climate change problem in the first place.

Delegates of the developing countries repeatedly stressed that the huge volume of atmospheric carbon being blamed as the cause of climate change was not emitted by Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Tuvalu, the Maldives, Nepal, Lesotho or the dozens of developing countries which are now facing the brunt of it.

In other words, those who caused the problem should bear a commensurate level of responsibility to fix it. This was reflected in the policy position “common but differentiated responsibilities” so often repeated by the developing country delegates.

Although this phrase is also strongly cited in the Copenhagen Accord, the devil in the detail took painstaking effort to negotiate.

Developing countries were emphatic that developed countries should take responsibility for the past. Developed countries were prepared to do so some extent but were seeking to get the major polluters of the future, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, to sign up in fixing what they now is a “global problem.”

These developing countries which between them have an estimated 400 million people still living below poverty, and that does not include others like Bangladesh and Indonesia, say they are not about to be told by the developed countries what source of energy to use in order to drive their economies, which is vital to raise the livelihood levels of the poor.

They demand that the developed countries put their money where their mouths are, and fund the requisite adaptation and mitigation technologies to wean the world away from fossil fuels.

When the negotiations over this stalled big-time, especially as developing countries, hugely backed by the civil society movements, were showing some strong backbone, the entire process was effectively shelved with the hastily-negotiated Copenhagen Accord, a document full of generic, motherhood-and-apple pie statements, thrashed out by the US and a small handful of countries in order to make the entire event a “political success” and make the leaders look good.

The issue has not gone away, however. Developing countries still feel short-shrifted, ignored and slighted. Given the steadily growing levels of the carbon in the atmosphere, even at current levels of usage, they are now doomed to managing the costs of switching to new energies, continuing to burn fossil fuels for large sectors of their economies, and, most important, paying for all the floods, fires, famines and assorted other storms and natural disasters set to be triggered by global warming.

The travel and tourism industry in these countries, and worldwide, will be heavily impacted. The intense snowstorms in Europe and the US, which affected the heaviest travel period of the year, are a harbinger of what’s to come. It’s going to get worse. Listening to an alternative, bottom-up perspective on the problem may expedite the search for a solution.