Implementing carbon neutral destination policies: issues from the Seychelles

Abstract

It is now accepted that tourism is a significant contributor to global climate change, especially through air travel's high greenhouse gas emissions. This paper analyses the dilemmas facing tourism planning in many small island developing states and presents a model approach toward overcoming those dilemmas by adapting carbon neutral tourism policies. It researches the implementation issues facing carbon neutral tourism policies on the Seychelles Islands: tourism to the islands is energy-intensive, and current plans to increase tourist numbers will entail growing emissions of greenhouse gases. This paper analyses tourism's current levels of energy use and emissions, and explores ways to reduce them. Based on a survey of tourists and industry representatives in the Seychelles, it discusses options for tourism-dependent small island developing states to implement and finance carbon neutrality, while outlining the complexities and limitations of such an objective.

Keywords:

• carbon neutral destinations
• climate change
• mitigation
• offsetting
• sustainable tourism

Acknowledgements

We wish to express our gratitude to Raman Paravaikkarasu, now Director of Engineering, Shangri-la Group of Hotels for his help during data collection. Helpful comments by three anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

^a Calculations of emissions are based on the main markets, using a main airport to main airport approach (in the United States: New York, Canada: Toronto and Australia: Brisbane)

*2004

^a to reflect the contribution to global warming made by greenhouse gases other than CO₂, emissions of CO₂ from aviation are multiplied with a factor of 2. Emissions from accommodation and activities are multiplied with a factor of 1.15 to account for indirect energy use.

1. In this calculation, CO₂ emissions from aviation (241,000 t CO₂) have been multiplied by a factor 2, equal to 482,000 t CO₂ (this is to give an indication of their contribution to global warming, not to compare CO₂ and non-carbon GHG). On top of this, other emissions (40,640 t CO₂) are multiplied by a factor 1.15 to account for indirect energy usage, corresponding to 46,736 t CO₂. In total, this results in the “equivalent” of 528,736 t CO₂ in 2005.

2. Accommodation establishments directly emitted 34,210 t CO₂ in 2005, corresponding to roughly 86,460 barrels of oil (34,210 t CO₂/3.15 = 10,860 t fuel = 13,747,000 l/159 l = 86,460 barrels).