Quite rightly, the focus in the mainstream media has been on the apparently successful moves to remove commitments to stop burning oil and gas. That this is even possible demonstrates how precarious our future is. As António Guterres pointed out back in July: “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” At the opening a couple of weeks ago it was possible to be optimistic with some funding commitment to “loss and damage” to help the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries hit by climate disasters.
There has been little or no coverage of tourism, around 10% of global consumption. The Tourism Panel on Climate Change, the TPCC, was formed to parallel the stock-taking being provided by the IPCC, openly and transparently applying science to measure the emissions attributable to the travel and tourism sector and to report on progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The work is funded by “the Sustainable Tourism Global Center within the Ministry of Tourism of Saudi Arabia, under the leadership of His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb.” Gloria Guevara Manzo – Chief Special Advisor Ministry of Tourism Saudi Arabia – argues that the report should “provide a stimulus toward a new era of climate resilient global tourism.”
Great panel discussions by Vice Minister of Tourism – KSA @Saudi_MT HRH Haifa Al Saud @hmalsaud1 on the Tourism industry’s role on climate change at the @Gi_Saudi pavilion at #COP28 @NEOM pic.twitter.com/OrDOAgrYp7
— Hon. Najib Balala (@tunajibu) December 4, 2023
The TPCC report published yesterday uses the same definition of climate-resilient development as the IPCC: ‘a process of implementing greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation options to support sustainable development for all.’ It emphasises the interdependence of climate action and sustainable development, the intersection between mitigation and adaptation, and the importance of agency and just societal transitions
Their visualisation combines “tourism transport emissions attributed to each country (in red), with climate hazard exposure (blue) and national climate policy consideration of tourism as evident in Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans”. Both the climate risk scores and the emissions produced by transport to the destination provide some counter-intuitive surprises. Take a look at the position of The Gambia on each ark of the graphic below.
There are 24 key findings – amongst the most significant are these
“Approximately 8-10% of global emissions are from tourism. Data show that tourism emissions have increased annually over the decade prior to Covid-19 disruptions, and tourism is not on track to achieve the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism interim target of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030. Urgent whole-of-sector leadership is required for tourism emissions to peak and decline substantially by the end of the decade.”
Aviation
“Tourist transport emissions have increased by 65% between 1995 and 2019. Air travel was a key driver of this growth, now contributing 26% of all tourist trips (domestic and international), but 75% of tourist transport emissions. Existing aviation technologies are unlikely to fully mitigate emissions by 2050. Sustainable aviation fuels can contribute to mitigating aviation’s climate impact, but their net GHG improvement, broader sustainability, scalability, and climate justice implications will constrain production. Emerging technologies will play an expanding role after 2040.”
Hotels
“The GHG intensity of hotel operations is gradually improving among leading operators in some regional markets but, without acceleration and expansion globally, will fall short of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030. Energy demand per room remained steady, indicating that emission reductions are the result of decarbonisation of electricity rather than lower energy consumption in the hotel.”
The social and economic benefits from tourism and the negative impacts are unevenly distributed “Global tourism emissions are heavily concentrated in a few high-income outbound markets and destinations. The unequal distribution of tourism emissions and potential mitigation strategies have important climate justice implications.”
The social cost of tourism carbon emissions is increasing and is likely to equal or exceed its direct contribution to the global economy by as much as US$2 trillion in 2030. The climate justice implications of travel emissions predominantly from high-income countries, and the disproportionate burden of the social costs of tourism emissions in highly vulnerable countries, compels greater consideration in tourism sector climate responses.
Climate change exposure and impacts are anticipated to be far-reaching for tourism. High sector vulnerability often coincides, both with regions where tourism contribution to GDP is high and those where tourism growth is anticipated to be the strongest through to the 2050s. Current forms of tourism will not be viable at some destinations.
The inconvenient truth
The trends captured in this Stocktake also highlight how many forms of emission intensive tourism growth are a major impediment to reducing emissions. This inconvenient truth needs to be addressed urgently. Advancing climate resilient tourism development is the collective responsibility of the global tourism community and requires much greater collaboration between international tourism organisations, countries and tourism authorities, the tourism industry and operators, destination communities, civil society, the tourism academy, and tourists.
