Can tourism deliver its “aspirational” greenhouse gas emission reduction targets?

Abstract

This review paper examines the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets postulated by a range of organizations seeking to reduce the consequences of global climate change and how, or if, the global tourism sector can achieve its share of those targets. It takes both existing estimates of current tourism GHG emissions and emissions projected in a business-as-usual scenario through to 2035 and contrasts them with the “aspirational” emission reduction targets proclaimed by the sector. Analysis reveals that with current high-growth emission trends in tourism, the sector could become a major global source of GHGs in the future if other economic sectors achieve significant emission reductions. Success in achieving emission reductions in tourism is found to be largely dependent on major policy and practice changes in air travel, and stated tourism emission reduction targets do not appear feasible without volumetric changes considering the limited technical emission reduction potential currently projected for the aviation sector. The opportunities and challenges associated with a shift towards a low-carbon global economy are anticipated to transform tourism globally and in all respects. Much greater consideration and dissemination of these issues is required to inform future tourism development and travel decisions.

Keywords:

• air travel
• carbon taxes
• climate change
• tourism development
• greenhouse gas
• mobility

Notes

1. This estimate has been based on the definition of UNWTO that “Tourism comprises the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes” (UNWTO, 2008a, Annex-21).

2. Emission associated with same-day visitors have been omitted. In 2005, emissions without same-day visitors were as follows: air (504 Mt CO₂), car (305 Mt CO₂), other transport (38 Mt CO₂), accommodations (275 Mt CO₂) and activities (48 Mt CO₂).

3. A subsequent separate analysis by the World Economic Forum (2009) that used somewhat different methods and included a different set of sub-sectors (it did not include “tourism activities”, but did include “cruise ship travel”) arrived at a very similar but slightly higher (13% greater) estimate of global tourism CO₂ emissions in 2005 (1476 Mt).

4. The IPCC defines radiative forcing as “… the change in the net, downward minus upward, irradiance (expressed in Wm^–2) at the tropopause due to a change in an external driver of climate change, such as, for example, a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide or the output of the Sun. … For the purposes of this report, radiative forcing is further defined as the change relative to the year 1750 and, unless otherwise noted, refers to a global and annual average value” (IPCC, 2007c, p. 951).

5. The estimate for radiative forcing from tourism provided in UNWTO-UNEP-WMO (2008, p. 133) was 3.7% to 9.0%.

6. In this paper, we present an update of tourism's contribution to radiative forcing, which considers the impact of aviation-induced cloudiness (AIC). AIC was not included in calculations in UNWTO-UNEP-WMO (2008) because Lee et al. (2009) recently provided the first analysis where AIC radiative forcing has been included in an assessment of the overall radiative forcing of aviation. Not including AIC would represent a major omission of the impact of aviation on radiative forcing. There remains, however, considerable uncertainty with respect to AIC due to calculating the impacts of contrails and contrail-induced cirrus clouds and their respective impact on radiative forcing, and thus, the impact of AIC is provided within a range. Lee et al. (2009) estimated an average contribution of AIC of 0.078 W/m² to radiative forcing in 2005, and a maximum contribution of 0.171 W/m². These estimates are for all aviation, where tourism-related aviation is about 80.5% of this total.

7. The World Economic Forum (2009) similarly estimated that CO₂ emissions from tourism would increase from 1476 Mt in 2005 to 3164 Mt by 2035 in a business-as-usual scenario

8. Cars are the most important transport mode in tourism, accounting for 49% of all trips (aircraft by comparison are 17% of trips). However, the average trip involving air travel causes much higher emissions per passenger than the average trip by car (at average occupation rates), because of the much greater distances involved in a long haul flight (e.g. 10,000 km) than a long car drive (e.g. 1000 km). The trend towards much longer distances for holiday, for example the substitution of a trip from the Netherlands to the Italian Alps or the Mediterranean by car for a trip to China or the United States by air, has had important implications for net emissions from global tourism over the past two decades.

9. Jatropha is assumed to be a drought- and flood-resistant plant that can be grown on marginal soils. It produces seeds with a high oil content (Achten et al., 2008). Recent studies identify higher than expected water requirements as a barrier to successful cultivation of Jatropha on marginal lands (Gerbens-Leenes, Hoekstra, & van der Meer, 2009).

10. There are also major challenges with respect to building the capacity of rail and road systems to provide sufficient access to tourism destinations that would facilitate such a modal shift, particularly where rail access (or high speed rail) does not currently exist. A detailed discussion of the challenges of increasing transport capacity and modal shifts between air, rail and road networks in different regions of the world is, however, beyond the scope of this paper.

11. For a more general discussion of the issues surrounding self-regulation in tourism see Bramwell and Lane (2010).

12. On the global average, flying 1000 pkm leads to emissions of 129 kg of CO₂ and consequently costs ∈3.23, based on the average emission factor of 0.129 kg/pkm (see UNWTO-UNEP-WMO, 2008, p. 124).

13. Taxation of aviation as a transport mode can be accomplished by either taxing aviation fuel (but current international conventions on bunker fuels currently preclude this, and a new international agreement would be needed to supersede existing legislation) or through passenger levies, as is done in the United Kingdom (although this system does not fully account for differential emissions of flights of different lengths and has been highly criticized for this; see Mayor and Tol 2007). The latter approach does not tax emissions related to cargo or promote energy efficiency by airlines in the same way that fuel taxes would. Peeters, Gössling and Becken (2007) provide further discussion of these issues.