Swedish Tourism and Climate Change Mitigation: An Emerging Conflict?

Abstract

Sweden has been one of the driving forces in establishing the new post‐Kyoto agreement of the European Union (EU), with the goal of achieving a 20% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020 over the base year 1990. The Swedish national goal of emission reductions has been set even higher. Global tourism has recently been identified as an economic sector contributing significantly to emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly through transport, but there are as yet few comprehensive studies assessing its role in global warming on a national basis. In the light of this, this paper seeks to provide an estimate of emissions from tourism in Sweden, showing that these account for about 10% of Swedish emissions, and increase rapidly. National emission reduction goals are thus in stark contrast to emission growth in the tourism sector, but this is not addressed in the government's climate strategy. The paper concludes that it may be highly relevant for governments to consider emissions from tourism, and particularly aviation, in climate policy.

Keywords:

• Aviation
• greenhouse gas emissions
• Kyoto
• sustainable transport
• sustainable tourism

Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to Jonas Åkerman, Lotta Frändberg, Hans Wråde, Erika Andersson Cederholm, Paul Upham, Ruth Wood, Carlo Aall and John Broderick for generously providing information and advice. The correctness of the results as well as their interpretation is entirely the authors' responsibility. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper.