What is the relationship between tourism and climate change in the developing world?

With the COP15 Conference well underway this week, many are turning their attention to global tourism and its role in climate change, as well as its impact on developing nations.

Do changes in travel practices that benefit the environment negatively affect the economies of top, non-industrialized destinations?

The connection between climate change and international tourism presents a host of challenges, with a number of varying perspectives that identify how the role of tourism affects both the physical and political sides of the international climate debate.

Like all the other industries, international tourism has the responsibility to substantially reduce its greenhouse gas emissions; through transportation, accommodation and various activities in the destinations, the tourism sector causes about five percent of global carbon emissions.

However, to be fair to the entire world, the costs and structural changes associated with these emission reductions must not be at the expense of the world’s poorest people.

While international decision makers in tourism seem to agree on this principle, there are major differences with regard to implementation and priorities, as well as severe opposition from “rightwingers” who fear that American money will be used to support economies beyond our borders.

High sensitivity to change

The travel industry is classified as “highly climate sensitive”. For example, changes in climate have direct and immediate impacts on the length and quality of the seasons, which each affect travel behavior.

On a long term scale, climate change alters natural landscapes used by tourism; changing the infrastructure and services that can lead to economic setbacks or mass migration as well as political instability in the destinations.

And while tourists of the developed world will (hopefully) always have the freedom to choose, their adaptability to change will grow. If a particular destination goes from economic boom due to high tourism levels to political and social strife due to drought, natural disaster or famine, tourists will simply stop going there. There is very little the actual destination can do to fight this without the means and funds to properly combat the affects of climate change.

Lifestyle a key role

In modern society, travel has become a large part of our daily lives, both personally and professionally, with tourism generally considered a “right of passage” for the privileged; people finding and experiencing new places, cultures and lifestyles outside of their own. This sounds great ion the surface, yet, the ramifications of irresponsible travel behavior come with a high cost.

For instance, transportation emissions alone contribute to climate change – with about two thirds of tourism related emissions attributed to air and car transport. So, an easy fix would be to curb the transport process, right? Wrong. Non-industrialized countries – often top destinations for “experiential travel” and well off the beaten path – are highly dependent on the global tourism economy.

Yet to date, the tourism factor has not been properly represented.

Taking responsibility

Come 2012, the Kyoto Protocol will be replaced by a new international agreement  – one which will hopefully come to light during the COP15 meetings that presents a clear set of targets for the tourism industry. This responsibility for real change lies with the industrialized nations of the world.

While climate change is in large part due to over-consumption of resources by a small part of the world‘s population (industrialized countries), the effects are far-reaching.

Industrialized nations need to drastically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in order to still prevent the worst consequences of climate change, while implementing comprehensive adaptation measures in the regions most affected by the already-negative impacts of climate change.

For instance, for over ten years, the aviation sector of the travel industry has been exempt from mitigation-related regulations, even though it is the primary source of carbon emissions within the industry.

Fast forward to 2012, and we have a deep-rooted need for political pressure on the travel and aviation industry to pay a fair share of the climate-related costs, including the costs of mitigation to curb global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the costs of helping poor people to adapt to those consequences of climate change that cannot be prevented, such as natural disasters, food shortages and loss of land due to rising sea levels.

Further reading

Luckily (and timely), a new and free e-publication has been created to heavily detail the effects of climate change on tourism.

Presented by the Institute for Integrative Tourism and Development, Naturefriends International, Naturefriends Austria, Climate Alliance Austria and the German Church Development Service EED, the presentation is available for download at: http://respect.at/media/pdf/pdf1300.pdf.