Tourism and climate change

Scroll down for posts that have been tagged with “cli­mate change” as it affects or relates to travel & tour­ism des­tin­a­tions and industry stakeholders.

Tour­ism is one of the world’s largest indus­tries, with mil­lions of people trav­el­ling to des­tin­a­tions around the globe each year. How­ever, tour­ism is also a sig­ni­fic­ant con­trib­ut­or to green­house gas emis­sions and cli­mate change.

Tour­ists’ trans­por­tion and the energy con­sump­tion and waste asso­ci­ated with tour­ism activ­it­ies are all sources of green­house gas emis­sions. The Inter­gov­ern­ment­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) estim­ates that tour­ism accounts for about 5% of glob­al green­house gas emissions.

Many argue that address­ing cli­mate change and redu­cing green­house gas emis­sions is cru­cial for the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the tour­ism industry. Indeed cli­mate change could have a sig­ni­fic­ant impact on the tour­ism industry if rising sea levels, extreme weath­er events, and changes in nat­ur­al eco­sys­tems neg­at­ively affect des­tin­a­tions and tour­ist activity.

In response, many tour­ism oper­at­ors and organ­isa­tions are imple­ment­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices and car­bon reduc­tion strategies to address this issue. (Or at least they claim to be doing so.) Some tour­ism organ­isa­tions and travel oper­at­ors have even signed up to declar­a­tions of cli­mate crisis and emer­gency. (Yet they remain in the travel & tour­ism business.)

Trav­el­lers can con­trib­ute to redu­cing the con­tri­bu­tion of tour­ism to cli­mate change by choos­ing lower-emis­sion trans­port­a­tion options, eco-friendly accom­mod­a­tions, and sus­tain­able tour­ism activ­it­ies. How­ever, they should do their due dili­gence to choose organ­isa­tions whose prac­tices align with their stated beliefs.

People who sin­cerely believe that there is a cli­mate crisis or emer­gency could lead by example and choose to shut down their tour­ism busi­nesses and not travel at all …

Tags are inform­al. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog tries not to get bogged down with ter­min­o­logy and defin­i­tions so you may dis­agree with tags applied (or not applied) to a post. Feel free to com­ment on any post you think has been incor­rectly or insuf­fi­ciently tagged. “GT” encour­ages good-faith debate and discussion.