Opinion

Introduced on Canada Day and for world tourism: The Maurice Strong Legacy Scholarships


Today is Canada Day. It’s also a day to remember the late Maurice Strong a Canadian Hero, a Travel & Tourism Veteran, who led many historical sustainable development initiatives, including the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and its Agenda 21 implementation framework.

Professor Geoffrey Lipman, a tourism personality on its own, co founder and president of the Hawaii, Brussels, Seychelles and Bali based International Coalition of Tourism Partners (ICTP ) =link to http://ictp.travel= and head of SUN x program introduced SUN x – the Strong Universal Network as being inspired by his friend and mentor, the late Maurice Strong, who led many historical sustainable development initiatives, including the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and its Agenda 21 implementation framework. Maurice collaborated with us for 20 years on Green Growth & Travelism issues. He knew climate change was eXistential for humanity, without a massive global response.

To continue his vision, we have created The Maurice Strong Legacy Scholarship Program. Each year, with our University partners, we will invite students – undergraduate and post graduate – to submit a 2,000-word essay on Impact-Travel -measured, green and 2050 climate resilient.


We will publish the top ten – each of which will receive a scholarship of $3000

For each published essay, we will enroll 20 “best efforts” as lifetime SUNx Members with access to our curated information on climate resilience and Impact-Travel, with an open invitation to our annual RefleXions event.

Sun Co-Founder, and President of ICTP, Professor Geoffrey Lipman said “We believe this growing network of smart young people, committed to advancing the case for climate resilience through Impact-Travel, will do much to keep Maurice Strong’s vision alive – and more importantly to build a responsive leadership cadre within the sector. It will link to the evolving Paris Accord implementation program and related SDGs. Maurice would have liked that.”

We are announcing the MSL Scholarship Program on Canada Day 2017 in honor of a great Canadian Internationalist.

We will provide 10 sponsored Scholarships this year and have a goal of 150, to celebrate Canada’s birthday. And looking for partners – public, private, and civil society – who share our vision of creating a movement within the travel and tourism sector, committed to developing climate resilience from the ground up.