Climate justice and tourism – Less planes, not more!

“You can’t walk to the Maldives”, “We want more planes flying, not less.” : Geoffrey Lipman, Assistant Secretary-General of the UNWTO

It is very clear from Lipman’s statement for whom and what UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is trying to negotiate. The ‘business as usual’ argument is that ‘tourism is a very important economic activity and alleviating poverty’. But the contribution of tourism to climate change has never been comprehensively assessed. In most of the tourist destinations, the tourism related calculations of benefits are at the cost of the free and often overlooked ecosystem services. The cost of the destruction of these natural resources and the consequences for the local economy and people’s livelihoods need to be calculated along with tourism’s economic contribution.

A proper cost benefit analysis with tourism’s actual carbon footprint, ecological, economic and sociological footprints and other negative impacts would disclose the actual situation. It would prove that mainstream tourism often even aggravates poverty and undermine Millennium Development Goals. The price of the destruction and damages are incalculable.

A careful analysis shows that the development of tourism in most of the third world economies work against the principles of economic sustainability. The economic leakages are significant in many destinations. This can be reasoned on the basis of many factors, including the high number of the foreign ownership of tourism supply; level of imports in terms of goods and services; and expatriates employed in these island destinations.

In the Maldives, one of the islands that ‘heavily depend’ on tourism, there is no income; capital gains, value added, or corporate tax. Duties are levied on all imported goods with the exception of fixtures, fittings and building materials for the construction of resorts. The liberal fiscal policies in the Maldives mean that foreign businesses are estimated to be able to repatriate 70 % of their turnover, and expatriates are allowed to repatriate 100 % of their salaries. Officially, the net retention of foreign exchange within the country is thought to be 21 % although in reality this could be much lower, according to a preliminary analysis for the third tourism master plan of the Maldives. Half of the population still earns less than a dollar a day. In other destinations, too, the claimed economic benefits distort the present discussions on tourism’s contribution to climate change.

The lament against the demand for regulation in aviation traffic needs to be challenged. Air transport has relatively high emission rates per passenger-kilometer, especially for short distances (less than 1000 km), because emissions are particularly high during take-off and landing. High altitude emissions contribute more to global warming per unit than other types of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 1999; Lee and Sausen, 2000). According to IPCC report, between 1990 – 2000 global CO2 emissions grew by 13 percent. Over the same time CO2 emissions from aviation grew by 25 percent. And now the sector is ready to grow by double in the next ten years unless stringent restrictions are imposed.

UNWTO forecasts that international tourism arrival will increase from 800 million from 2005 to 1.1 billion in 2010 and nearly 1.6 billion in 2020. If these forecasts are correct, we can see tourist arrivals grow by over 4 percent each year over the next decade with 5 percent growth in tourists travel by air. Airbus, one of the two world aeronautics construction giants, foresees a steady 4.9 % growth in total number of passengers from 2007 to 2026, which would involve a minimum increase of 3 % annually in GHG emissions from air transport. By 2035, the CO2 emissions could be 152 % higher and RF could shoot up 188 % more, resulting from the extraordinary increase in air traffic. Bearing in mind that the worst case scenario for the global increase in GHGs contemplated by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) involves a maximum of + 88 % for the 2000-2030 period, the contrast could not be greater.

Growth and reduction cannot go together. The hard truth is that the only way to reduce aviation emissions is to stop the growth in demand. This would also reduce the scale of some of the other environmentally damaging effects of air transport, such as noise, and loss of land for airports and surface links.

The major omission of the Kyoto Protocol was that it excluded tourism, particularly aviation, from the climate agreement. The responsibility of cutting emissions from this sector was given to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The ICAO did not succeed in doing something meaningful, concrete and barred progress for many years.

An unchecked exclusion of aviation in post 2012 agreement would double or triple the emissions from aviation by 2050. They will then form a significant proportion of global carbon emissions which the world cannot afford. To control global warming to a significant extent, the Copenhagen agreement has to control emissions from all sectors including aviation and tourism.

The arguments of potential sustainability of the aviation sector through carbon offsetting, implementation of more efficient engines and experimenting with biofuels are simply delaying progress. There are many testimonies and studies available to prove that many of these market based solutions do not work and some of them have serious negative impacts.

A recent study of Friends of the Earth states that offsetting is a dangerous distraction and does not work. Instead, the world needs developed countries to cut their own emissions first and fast and pay for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. The report argues that in practice offsetting is having a disastrous impact on the prospects for averting catastrophic climate change. It is vital that the inherent and systemic flaws in the approach are recognized ahead of negotiations. These problems cannot be dealt with by simply reforming the “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM); instead completely new approaches are needed that are effective and just.

Generally, offsetting counts action in developing countries as part of the cuts promised in the developed countries, although the science is clear that action is needed in both developed and developing countries. In practice offsetting programmes are not leading to global emissions reductions or benefits to developing countries. Instead, they are simply leading to more ingenious ways to avoid cutting emissions.

The suggestion for bio fuels needs to be questioned. To replace the current worldwide aviation fuel requirements with Jatropha based biofuel, for example, would require a land area approximately the size of 1 million square kilometres combined. The conversion of large amount of land for bio fuels plantation will be a serious threat to food security and will displace many poor farmers and agriculture workers from their livelihood. The efficiency of bio fuels to bring down the carbon emissions have been questioned by experts. Some experts clearly pointed out that biofuels are the worst of the available alternatives.

The introduction of more efficient aircraft engines is making some impact on emissions per passenger mile, but the rate of improvement is much slower than the rate of market growth. It will take many decades to change the current aircraft designs to more effective ones.

In his statement, Geoffrey Lipman says “we want more planes to fly”. It is interesting to know who is flying the most. Today’s international travel still has an elitist nature. This is not just in developing countries; developed countries are also no exception. Those in the highest income groups are disproportionately responsible for emissions from aviation, too.. On a yearly basis, less than 2 % of people spend their vacations abroad; that is a little over 130 million.

Climate change is not just an issue of mitigation and adaptation. It demands a complete paradigm shift from the current form of neo liberal capitalist development to a people centric approach. The ‘business as usual’ approach is no more valid and cannot continue. What we need is actions for a relevant and concrete regulatory mechanism to reduce the emissions from the tourism sector including aviation. The tourism sector should explicitly be brought under the UNFCCC regulatory framework.

It is very important to decouple the tourism and economic growth argument that is the result of an economic globalization. What is the logic of relying too much on international travel that is contributing to rising sea levels and devastating millions of people’s livelihood through its carbon emissions and ill effects? While tourism may bring economic benefit to few in the shorter term, in many places such benefits are likely to be overshadowed by the impact of climate change and other negative impacts of tourism. Tourism is not a viable option for the poor and should not be promoted as a development model for poor nations. The idea of making poor nations dependent on an industry like tourism that is highly vulnerable to many external factors needs to be scrapped.