Target 12.b: Monitor sustainable tourism
Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable development impacts for sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
The monitoring tools are statistical frameworks developed by UN Tourism with national statistics offices through the Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism program, so the core of the target is governmental. Listed tourism companies control much of the underlying data, and that control has been contested. Airbnb litigated for two years against New York City's ordinance requiring short-term rental platforms to share listing data with regulators, before settling in June 2020 and agreeing to quarterly disclosure. Shareholder pressure also reaches tourism impact disclosure. Green Century withdrew a proposal at Royal Caribbean after the company agreed to greater transparency on plastic reduction and its net-zero ship plans. If platforms, cruise lines and hotel groups disclosed their impacts fully and supplied data to public monitoring systems rather than resisting them, the tools would work better. Governments still build and run the frameworks, so owners help at the margin.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Files and withdraws shareholder proposals at cruise lines asking them to disclose and reduce tourism operating impacts, including single-use plastics, food waste and net-zero ship plans.
2 campaigns on record
Disclose more on single-use plastic reduction efforts and on the implementation plan for the pledged 2035 net-zero-emissions cruise ship.
Result: Withdrawn after the company agreed to the requested steps
Royal Caribbean agreed to provide the additional disclosure, and Green Century withdrew the proposal.
Increase transparency on food waste management and reduction strategies across the fleet.
Result: Withdrawn after the company agreed to disclose
Royal Caribbean committed to publicly disclose food waste assessment data, quantities and on-board reduction initiatives in its 2018 corporate social responsibility report.
Royal Caribbean Agrees to Improve Food Waste Disclosure Amid Pressure, Waste360, 2019-04
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.