Decarbonising tourism: mission impossible?

ABSTRACT

The tourism industry collectively seeks to portray itself as being proactive in embracing climate action, but is the sector doing enough to decarbonise to the extent agreed on in the Paris Agreement? This paper presents a constructive critique of the key mechanisms that presently define the global travel and tourism industry’s attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Six challenges are identified and each constitutes a major hurdle to rapid and substantial progress. These are: tourism’s embeddedness in the prevailing growth paradigm, the institutionalisation of interests, the nature of policy making, the inadequacy of incremental improvements, the focus on technological efficiency instead of (behavioural) conservation, and the global distribution of tourism. The paper concludes by suggesting that only systemic changes at a large scale will be sufficient to break or disrupt existing arrangements and routines. Tourism academics should contribute to identifying and helping to implement solutions, but this will require much greater collaboration with the industry and government, as well as with researchers from a broad range of disciplines.

KEYWORDS:

• Decarbonisation
• carbon footprint
• neoliberalism
• tourism system
• governance
• destinations

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Prof Ken Hughey and Dr Emma Whittlesea for their critical and very helpful comments. My sincere thanks also to Rochelle Turner and Geoffrey Lipman for providing feedback. I am also very grateful to Prof Bernard Lane who gave me his wisdom both as a longstanding expert in sustainable tourism and as an editor; his input has improved the manuscript substantially. All the arguments made are mine and may not reflect the views of those colleagues who read the manuscript. Thanks are also due to the reviewers who provided their detailed and insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Susanne Becken is a Professor and the Director of the Griffith Institute for Tourism at Griffith University in Australia. She has published widely on sustainable tourism, climate change and tourism resource use and was a contributing author to the Fourth and the Fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports. Susanne is a member of the Air New Zealand Sustainability Advisory Panel, PATA’s Sustainability and Social Responsibility committee, and the Whitsunday Climate Change Innovation Hub.

Notes

1 Increasing tourism’s dependence on digital technologies bears some risks, especially when a small number of very large companies accumulate considerable power. At the same time, this disruption has the potential to undermine existing systems and players, especially when decentralised systems challenge existing ways of ‘doing business’.

2 See Pollock (2015) for ideas on linking conscious travel, flourishing and well-being.

3 Hawken (2010) comments on capitalism noting ‘we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product’ (p. xxii).

4 This problem is not unique to tourism, however, the difference is that tourism emissions are usually less visible (e.g. compared with agriculture or mining that form part of the System of National Accounts and are clearly identified in national GHG inventories) and at the same time fast growing. Hence, in terms of reducing exposure to future carbon risks, countries might well become aware of the increasingly important role tourism is playing in achieving or failing NDCs under the Paris Agreement.

5 The Tourism Satellite Account has been created to address this issue from an economic perspective. The method involves extracting tourism components from the standard National Accounts to provide insights into tourism’s contribution to the national economy. Key metrics, such as contribution to GDP, value add, and employment are used, amongst others. The UNWTO (2017) is exploring ways for extending such an approach to environmental accounting. In the meantime it remains difficult to discern the carbon impact of tourism, increasing the challenge of effective policy making.

6 One problem relates to additionality, i.e. demonstrating real and additional reductions in GHG emissions. In a study on the effectiveness of the Clean Development Mechanism – one major path to generate carbon credits – Cames et al. (2016) found that ‘85% of the projects covered in this analysis and 73% of the potential 2013–2020 Certified Emissions Reduction (CER) supply have a low likelihood that emission reductions are additional and are not over-estimated’ (p. 11).

7 Mann and Wainwright (2018) note that the notion of market failure is symptomatic of liberal capitalism, which does not question markets per se, but acknowledges their potential failure. Accordingly, they note that the prevailing instruments of emission trading schemes, carbon offsetting, catastrophe bonds and similar are market-driven responses that ultimately may be insufficient to address the root causes of the problem.

8 The example of airport extensions versus national climate policies highlights this conflict.

9 The rebound effect relates to the observation that improving efficiency might lead to greater use of this resource. In the context of motor vehicles, for example, it was found that a 5% increase in fuel efficiency leads to a 2% drop in fuel use (not 5%). The reason is that vehicle users are now driving faster or further (Wang, Han, & Lu, 2016).

10 The streetlight effect goes back to a joke that has been told in several contexts and cultures:

A drunk man is searching for something under a streetlight in the middle of the night. A policeman comes by and asks the man what he had lost. The drunk answered he had lost a $2 bill (or his keys in other versions), and the policeman helps searching. After a while, he asks the drunkard “are you sure you lost it here?” “No”, said the man, “I lost it in the park, but the light here is better”.

11 ‘Greenwash’ covers the spectrum of deliberate distortion (‘talking green while lobbying brown’, Lyon, 2018, p. 1), systemic failures (e.g. positive action with non-material impact), and being blinded by our own ‘story telling’ and desire to improve the image of the industry and the value of individual brands (Vos, 2009).

12 Note that many low-cost airlines do not operate frequent flyer systems. One reason is that customer loyalty is secondary to low prices in attracting travellers, especially those segments that make short-term decisions that are driven by price rather than product.

13 Originally created by Air Canada in 1984, Aeroplan is now a coalition loyalty programme (owned by Aimia) that is used by multiple airlines, credit cards and retail companies. Aimia (https://www.aimia.com/about-aimia/) has promoted carbon offsetting to its customers in multiple campaigns and provides calculators and other tools.

14 Lane (2017, p. 16) contends: ‘There is an urgent need for more and deeper research into the mechanics, politics and outcomes of sustainable destination management’.

15 For a recent assessment of CORSIA’s effectiveness see Lee’s (2018) paper for the UK Department for Transport.