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

UNWTO, 9 July 2008
The Way Forward to Adaptation and Mitigation on Tourism
13.3 The Contribution of Tourism to Climate Change
This report represents the first detailed attempt to assess the global share of CO 2 emissions attributable to
tourism. The data and research findings assembled in this report indicate that tourism is a non-negligible
contributor to climate change and that emissions are expected to grow considerably over the next three
decades with a ‘business-as-usual’ trajectory. International and domestic tourism emissions from three
main subsectors (transportation, accommodations, and activities), were estimated to represent between
3.7% and 5.4% of global CO 2 emissions in 2005 (with a best estimate of 4.9%). The contribution of
tourism to global warming measured in radiative forcing was estimated to be between 3.7% and 5.4%
when cirrus cloud-related effects are excluded (with 4.6% of RF the best estimate).*
Regarding CO 2 emissions by sub-sector, transport generates the largest proportion of emissions (75%).
In terms of radiative forcing (contribution to 2005 climate change) the share of transport is larger and
ranges from 82% to 90%, with air transport alone accounting for 54% to 75% of the total. Emissions
from accommodation and activities were estimated to be lower than transport emissions, but far from
negligible.
Variation in emissions from different types of tourist trips is large, with the average trip generating 0.25
tonnes of CO 2 . Long-haul and very luxury cruises can however generate up to 9 t CO 2 per trip (i.e., 35
times the emissions caused by an average trip). The majority of tourist trips cause only small amounts
of emissions, though. For instance, trips by coach and rail account for 16% of all international tourist
trips, but stand only for 1% of CO2 emissions generated by all international tourist trips (transport only).
Long-haul travel between the five world regions stands for only 2.2% of all tourist trips, but contributes
16% to global tourist emissions.
The ‘business-as-usual’ scenario developed for 2035 shows that there will be considerable growth – more
than a doubling – in CO 2 emissions and RF in the tourism sector. This strong growth in emission will stand
in stark contrast with the objectives of the Kyoto and post-Kyoto Agreements and may thus jeopardize
the ability of tourism to contribute fully to United Nation’s MDGs. As a consequence, a comprehensive
strategy is required to decouple future tourism growth from increased energy consumption, and thus
from transport growth.
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13.4 Mitigation Potential
Tourism has the responsibility to minimise harmful GHG emissions and there are many technological,
behavioural, managerial and policy initiatives that can bring tourism to a more sustainable emissions
pathway. For tourism transport, technological improvements are unlikely to be enough to compensate
for the rapid growth in demand, in particular for air travel. Large potentials for emission reductions
also exist in land transport, accommodation and activities. In particular the energy needed for heating
and cooling can be reduced significantly (e.g., through solar heating of water, better insulation, and
optimising the use of air-conditioning). The climate change mitigation potential is thought to be relatively
high in the tourism sector because efforts to reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions in the
sector are still largely in their infancy and thus far have been taken without any vision of a coordinated
sector-wide strategic response. 738 The Mitigation Scenarios developed suggest that emissions of the
2035 ‘business-as-usual’ trajectory could be reduced by 38% with the ‘technical-efficiency’ scenario
and 44% with the ‘modal-shift’ and ‘length-of-stay’ scenario. Importantly, when these scenarios are
combined emissions were able to be reduced to 16% below the 2005 baseline, which is consistent
with the desired emissions pathway of the international community, as discussed at the “Vienna Climate
Change Talks”. ** This study shows that with combinations of strong mitigation effort significant emission
reduction is possible by 2035 versus a ‘business-as-usual’ trajectory, without jeopardizing the growth of
* Because of the large uncertainty related to the radiative forcing effects of cirrus clouds, the radiative forcing for tourism ranges
from 3.4% to a possible maximum of 9.0% when the cirrus-related effects are included in the analysis. This range will not be
able to be reduced until the scientific understanding of the radiative forcing influence of cirrus clouds improves.
** The ‘Vienna Climate Change Talks 2007’ represent the latest international negotiations on GHG emission reductions under
the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2007/
unisinf230.html
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