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

UNWTO, 9 July 2008
Mitigation Policies and Measures
governments at all levels, and tourists themselves – in a suite of activities to reduce emissions, while
maintaining the opportunity for tourism development. To achieve this it is important that far more
tourism actors become engaged in moving towards mitigate emissions and reduce radiative forcing than
is presently the case. So far only relatively few leaders in tourism are actively seeking to reduce their
emissions. Voluntary initiatives by a significant percentage of global tourism businesses could have a
key role in moving towards sustainability, however, given the uncertainty regarding the effectiveness
of voluntary initiatives, a combination of voluntary sector-wide initiatives and consistent government
policy and regulatory measures will be needed to generate the far-reaching change required.
In this context it is important to note that there are large differences regarding the effectiveness of various
emission reduction initiatives. While there are many options to reduce emissions, the analysis in Chapter
11 and the mitigation scenarios in Section 12.5 suggest that the greatest potential is related to air travel.
Reducing growth in the number air transport pkm will achieve more to reduce tourism’s contribution
to climate change than most other emission reduction measures taken together. As indicated, changes
in air travel patterns need to be balanced against other development objectives; however there is
considerable potential in many nations for promoting tourism development based on domestic tourism
and visitors from neighbouring countries, with relatively low CO 2 emissions per trip.
This Chapter also identified a number of knowledge gaps. Most importantly, there is currently no
alternative technology to move to non-fossil-fuel aircraft. Current investments in traditional aircraft
mean that the tourism industry will be ‘locked into’ this technology (and accordingly emissions) for at
least a few more decades. In other sectors, such as surface transport and tourism establishments, the
non-fossil fuel technology is more advanced and improvements depend more on a successful (and
cost-effective) implementation of technologies. This is largely determined by policies (that hinder or
encourage such shifts) and by behaviours of the main stakeholders in tourism, including managers who
decide to invest in sustainable alternatives and tourists who use these.
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