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New initiative announced by Geoffrey Lipman at IIPT Global Leadership Summit will connect Climate Friendly Travel, Peace Parks, youth engagement and community-based tourism, with a formal launch planned for UN International Day of Peace
SUNx Malta President Geoffrey Lipman announced CanadaStrong Travel, a new international initiative designed to bring together tourism, peace, climate action, and youth engagement amid growing geopolitical and environmental uncertainty.
Lipman unveiled the initiative at the IIPT Global Leadership Summit, as the International Institute for Peace through Tourism marks its 40th anniversary.
CanadaStrong Travel is expected to formally launch on 21 September 2026, the United Nations International Day of Peace, and will bring together SUNx Malta’s Climate Friendly Travel and Dodo4Kids programs with the peace-through-tourism philosophy IIPT champions.
The initiative will also honor the legacy of Canadian environmentalist and sustainable-development pioneer Maurice Strong, Lipman’s longtime friend and mentor.
Speaking at the summit, Lipman described a world confronting what he regards as four major “wars”: the existential struggle against the climate crisis; the challenge of humanizing increasingly powerful artificial intelligence; the actual wars in Ukraine and the Middle East; and what he characterized as an assault by Donald Trump on the established international rules-based order and public understanding.
Against that backdrop, Lipman said tourism could become a practical force connecting peace, climate resilience, human understanding, and action by a new generation.
From Climate Friendly Travel to CanadaStrong Travel
CanadaStrong Travel builds on more than a decade of work by SUNx — the Strong Universal Network, an organization inspired by Maurice Strong and focused increasingly on preparing the travel and tourism sector for the intensifying climate crisis.
SUNx Malta describes its central concept of Climate Friendly Travel (CFT)as travel that is low-carbon, linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and aligned with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C ambition.
Supported by the Malta Tourism Authority and Malta’s tourism institutions, SUNx Malta has developed a combination of climate education, national chapters, a Climate Friendly Travel Registry and support for tourism businesses and communities developing climate action plans.
The organization says its network now includes around 1,000 companies on its CFT Registry and 150 graduates of its Climate Friendly Travel Diploma leading chapters in more than 60 countries. Its longer-term ambition is to help create 100,000 Strong Climate Champions by 2030.
Education has become an increasingly important part of that strategy. In partnership with the Institute of Tourism Studies in Malta, SUNx developed a postgraduate Diploma in Climate Friendly Travel, with particular attention to students from developing countries and Small Island Developing States — destinations that often depend heavily on tourism while also being among those most exposed to climate disruption.
For SUNx, the aim is to turn education into action: graduates become Climate Friendly Travel chapter leaders who can help tourism businesses, communities and travelers respond locally to a global problem.
Putting children at the center
More recently, SUNx Malta has expanded its focus through Dodo4Kids , using the story of the extinct dodo to introduce children to climate change, biodiversity, sustainability, and the consequences of failing to protect the planet.
The programme represents an important evolution in SUNx’s philosophy. Rather than treating climate action exclusively as an industry or government responsibility, it seeks to give young people a place in the conversation about the future of tourism and the planet they will inherit.
SUNx has also launched an initiative to send Dodo4Kids books to children in Ukraine, extending the programme into communities directly affected by war.
CanadaStrong Travel will take that concept further.
Through a new collaboration with IIPT, the initiative plans to bring Dodo4Kids activities to Peace Parks around the world, linking environmental education with IIPT’s longstanding belief that tourism can contribute to international understanding and peace.
Global Himalayan Expeditionsis expected to support young people’s “adventure for good” journeys, combining travel experiences with positive community impact, while Canada-based Tripianwill help travelers develop more meaningful journeys with stronger connections to the communities they visit.
The result is intended to be more than another sustainable-tourism program. CanadaStrong Travel aims to connect the traveler, destination community, young people and the environmental and peace agendas within the same framework.
Geoffrey Lipman: five decades shaping global tourism
The initiative also reflects the unusual career trajectory of Professor Geoffrey Lipman, who has spent more than five decades working at the intersection of aviation, tourism policy, development and, increasingly, climate change.
Before establishing SUNx, Lipman occupied senior positions in three of the organizations that helped shape modern international tourism.
He served as Executive Director of the International Air Transport Association (IATA)during an era of major change and airline liberalisation. He later became the first President of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), where he strengthened recognition of travel and tourism as a major global economic sector and developed approaches to measuring its economic contribution.
Lipman later served as Assistant Secretary-General of the UN World Tourism Organization, working on tourism and development initiatives and helping elevate tourism within wider international policy discussions.
His career has also included work with the World Economic Forum, the United Nations Development Program and public- and private-sector organizations across several continents. Today, alongside his role as President and co-founder of SUNx Malta, he remains closely involved in debates about tourism’s response to climate change.
That experience has increasingly led Lipman to argue that measuring tourism primarily through arrivals, revenues and economic growth is no longer sufficient. He contends that climate risk, resilience, biodiversity, community interests, and the future consequences of today’s tourism decisions must become equally central to the sector’s development.
The Maurice Strong connection
At the heart of both SUNx and CanadaStrong Travel is Maurice Strong, one of the most influential figures in the modern international environmental movement.
Strong served as Secretary-General of the landmark 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, helping establish the architecture through which governments subsequently addressed climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development.
Lipman met Strong shortly before the Rio Earth Summit and has described himself as Strong’s friend and pupil for the following 25 years, until Strong’s death in 2015.
In 2010, Lipman asked Strong to support the creation of a vehicle that could connect tourism more directly with the sustainability challenges Strong had championed throughout his international career. That initiative became SUNx — the Strong Universal Network, with the “x” reminding us of the existential nature of climate change.
SUNx Malta followed in 2019 with support from Malta’s tourism authorities, allowing the network to expand its Climate Friendly Travel education, registry and international chapter programmes.
CanadaStrong Travel will explicitly continue that legacy.
A central element will be the Earth Charter, developed through an international process in which Strong and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev played leading roles and formally launched in 2000. Its principles of ecological responsibility, human dignity, social justice and peace will serve as a philosophical roadmap for the new initiative.
For Lipman, the connection is also deeply personal: CanadaStrong Travel is intended as a continuing tribute to his Canadian mentor and friend.
Travel as a force for peace
The announcement at an IIPT summit gives the project another historical connection.
Since its creation in 1986, the International Institute for Peace through Tourism has promoted the idea that tourism can be more than an economic activity — that travel can foster cross-cultural understanding, reconciliation and peace.
CanadaStrong Travel intends to combine that philosophy with SUNx Malta’s climate agenda.
Its proposed Peace Parks activities, youth journeys, community experiences and Dodo4Kids programmes are designed around a common proposition: travel should leave destinations, communities and travellers better equipped to face the future.
The initiative also reflects what Lipman sees as an emerging international outlook associated with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney— one that places greater emphasis on international cooperation, resilience and a rules-based global system at a time when traditional geopolitical relationships are being reassessed.
The choice of the name CanadaStrongis therefore deliberate, linking a Canadian tradition of internationalism with Maurice Strong’s environmental legacy and a contemporary argument for tourism based on peace, decency between people and respect for the planet.
As SUNx Malta expands from Climate Friendly Travel into this broader peace-and-people agenda, CanadaStrong Travel represents an attempt to answer a larger question facing global tourism: not simply how people will travel in a climate-constrained world, but what travel should ultimately be for.
Its answer is ambitious — travel that strengthens communities, educates the next generation, respects planetary boundaries and helps people understand one another.
SUNx Malta — the Strong Universal Network — is a legacy programme inspired by the late Maurice Strong and dedicated to advancing Climate Friendly Travel: low carbon, SDG-linked and Paris 1.5-aligned. Supported by the Malta Tourism Authority and working with organisations including the Institute of Tourism Studies Malta, SUNx promotes climate resilience through education, tourism climate action, international chapters, youth engagement and its Climate Friendly Travel Registry. Its programmes include the Climate Friendly Travel Diploma and Dodo4Kids, with a particular focus on developing countries and Small Island Developing States.
CanadaStrong.travel is scheduled to formally launch on 21 September 2026, the UN International Day of Peace.
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