The Forum’s topic - Climate Change and Challenges for Tourism Education - represents the culmination of wide-ranging debate on climate change and its impact on the tourism sector, addressed from various perspectives in 2007, by means of the following initiatives: the 5th Global Travel and Tourism Summit organised by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). Universities, institutes and schools offering tourism education/training,together with international organisations and companies, will debate and evaluate the current state of the dual relationship between tourism and global warming, in light of tourism’s contribution to global warming, and the latter’s respective impact on tourism, in order to identify the contribution that may be made by tourism education in response to this urgent issue.

The AMFORHT Lisbon World Forum 2008, organised in close association with the World Tourism Organisation (OMT), will use the “Davos Declaration on Climate Change and Tourism. Responding to Global Challenges”, of October 3, 2007, as its framework of reference, and will also focus on good practices that currently exist in the sector’s companies and on public policies for tourism development, together with links to research and necessary innovations in educational curricular components.

Participation in the AMFORHT Lisbon World Forum 2008, constitutes an opportunity to delineate paths and solutions, compare measures and initiatives, and thereby understand and foster a common effort, wherein tourism education may make a clear contribution.

The event will include speeches delivered by renowned guest speakers and communications resulting from open invitations to the scientific and technical community for works to be selected by an International Scientific Council. The AMFORHT Lisbon World Forum 2008 will thus offer unique conditions for meetings and debate, in order to strengthen and reinforce the ties between the various agents of the tourism sector, thus enabling and ensuring a commitment from the Tourism education sector in this decisive process.