Climate Change and Tourism - UNEP - Division of Technology ...

UNWTO, 9 July 2008
Emissions from Tourism: Status and Trends
causes 55% of all CO 2 emissions and an even higher share of radiative forcing. The projected
increase in the share of trips and passenger kilometres means that the proportion of CO 2 emissions
from air transport is expected to increase to approximately 72% in 2020, while the share of trips
by air will rise to 29%. With the increased RF of aviation emissions at high altitude taken into
account, the relative contribution of air travel to global warming in this analysis would actually
be much higher.
Figure 11.1 Trips, mobility and CO 2 emissions of all tourism trips by EU25 citizens (including
domestic, intra-EU25 plus Switzerland and Norway, and intercontinental) in 2000
and a forecast for 2020 (%)
100
80
60
40
20
0
Journeys Mobility CO 2
(pkm) emissions
Source: Peeters, P. et al. (2004).
11.1.2.1 Aviation
2000 2020
100
80
60
40
20
0
Journeys Mobility CO 2
(pkm) emissions
Air
Rail
Ferry
Coach
The tourism share of aviation-related CO 2 emissions can be estimated from the well documented
contribution of commercial aviation, which includes all passenger traffic and freight transport. Emissions
from all commercial aviation are estimated to be in the order of 640 Mt CO 2 in 2005 641 , with a share
of tourism-related emissions of 80.5% (see Annex 2.2.2). Consequently, the tourism-related share of
aviation emissions is 515 Mt CO 2 . Given global distances of about 3,980 billion pkm travelled by air
(i.e., the total distances covered by air transport as shown in Table 11.3), a global emission factor for
passenger transport can be derived, which is 0.129 kg CO 2 per pkm.
Figure 11.2 shows the estimated distribution of air transport regarding the number of trips, transport
volume (in billion pkm) and CO 2 emissions. The most important finding is eventually that though
international tourist trips by air (intra- and interregional) stand for about 45% of all international tourist
trips (see Table 11.1), they represent 87% (321 Mt CO 2 ) of emissions of international tourist trips (371
Mt CO 2 – see Table 11.3).
Car
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