On June 19 and 20, Es Baluard Museu's Aljub will host the eForum Mallorca Experience 2024, which, under the title Committed to our future, will address the following issues in four sessions: the challenges and solutions in the era of environmental sustainability, corporate leadership and sustainable urban development, the challenges of the future of sustainable port cities and the future of tourism from the perspective of natural resources, carrying capacity and coexistence with the environment.
The sessions will be moderated by José Luis Gallego, Laura Dalmau, Javier Cortés and Manuel Molina. The forum will be inaugurated by the President of the Government, Marga Prohens, and closed by the Councillor for Enterprise, Employment and Energy, Alejandro Sáenz de San Pedro. Register here.
Environmental journalist and writer José Luis Gallego believes that ‘in a situation as serious as the current one, events like the Mallorca Experience 2024 eForum are very important, as they make everything related to climate change and sustainability comprehensible, especially because it concerns the entire population, although a large part of it wants to look the other way. These issues are so important that in 10 or 20 years' time, the news will be talking about climate change and other things."
Gallego stresses that ‘we run the risk of facing eco-fatigue - fatigue with information on climate change that is often negative - and eco-anxiety, which is spreading among young people in the face of a future that is not at all hopeful. However, there are positive signs in the business world, which is becoming aware of its responsibility for sustainability and may even be ahead of environmentalism, and in the world of communication, which has reacted late, but is gradually taking on a positive, more educational role of dissemination and communication’.
Finally, the environmental journalist indicated that ‘in my session, Challenges and solutions in the era of environmental sustainability, we will deal with a current issue in the Balearic Islands, such as the responsibility of renewables in an energy transition that is being meteoric and with negative impacts. This transition, within a framework of sustainable development, is not going to be easy’.
Laura Dalmau, journalist at ECODES, specialising in climate and politics, points out that ‘platforms for exchange and generation of initiatives are part of the solutions to the global climate crisis. Only the alliance between institutions, citizens, governments, the business sector and organisations such as ECODES will make possible a transformation that will accelerate the just ecological transition we need. In this process, it is crucial to communicate the problem with data and good communication, and to provide solutions and examples of initiatives that are already being implemented. Dalmau recalls that ‘transport is responsible for almost 30% of greenhouse gas emissions in Spain. Of this figure, more than 27% corresponds to road transport. 25,000 people in Spain die because of poor air quality, according to the European Environment Agency. The session ‘Corporate leadership and sustainable urban development’ will deal with all of this, providing measures from a social, business and institutional perspective."
The director of Hosteltur, Manuel Molina, will moderate the panel entitled The tourism of the future: natural resources, carrying capacity and social harmony, which will tackle the thorny problem of tourist saturation, a burning issue in the Balearic Islands, and the limitation of natural resources. In his opinion, ‘we are at the ideal moment to tackle this situation, because important changes have to be made when things are going well’. Moreover, ‘there is maximum consensus that the situation is unsustainable and there are already other destinations that have already had this debate and taken measures. Here we have to do it because tourist demand will continue to grow’.
In Molina's opinion, it is necessary to ‘turn around’ the Balearic tourism model, and he focuses more specifically on the holiday rental segment, for which ‘the right regulatory framework has not been imposed’. On the other hand, he believes that this is a course of action that must have the involvement and complicity of the tourism stakeholders themselves, starting with hoteliers and tour operators. ‘Names such as TUI or Jet2Holidays are clear that their clients must be satisfied in order for the experience to be the desirable one. Finally, he stresses the importance of acting on the basis of studies and the collection of reliable statistics. ‘The first thing is the data, because the data kills the story."
Javier Cortés, international consultant for the 2030 Agenda and founder of Coop&Co, will be in charge of leading the round table dedicated to port management and all its derivatives, including cruise tourism. ‘A territorial project that generates confidence in guaranteeing the living conditions of its citizens must be conceived and managed in an integral manner, considering the interrelations between economic, social and environmental aspects of the territory’, he points out. For this reason, in his opinion, a port city ‘must necessarily integrate the aspects linked to the management of the port in its development model’.
Likewise, in order to develop a project for the future which generates confidence amongst the citizens, he considers that ‘an alliance of all the actors, public and private’ is essential. In this way, Cortés emphasises the need for the public administration to be in charge of generating these spaces for dialogue. Cortés agrees with Molina that ‘we are at an excellent moment because the territory is capable of mobilising different spheres towards shared objectives’. With respect to the issue of the arrival of cruise ships in Palma, he insists on dialogue to determine what formulas should be applied, and to do so from a consensus perspective. ‘The solution must be designed by all of us: the debate cannot be cruises yes or no, but cruises how’.
Finally, he stresses once again the need to generate confidence in order to bring all these actions to a successful conclusion: ‘This is the fundamental value of any medium and long-term project’. And he concludes: ‘The quality of life of all the residents must be at the centre of the project’.