Tourism sector accounts for about 10 pc of global GDP as well as 10 pc of employment
If a study were to be done about the word most often used by companies around the world in their public communication nowadays, chances are very high that sustainability or its variations would comfortably take the crown. Indeed, over the past few years, no public utterance or press conference or press statement seems to end without sustainability being repeatedly present in there.
The sustainability bug seems to have bitten the tourism sector as well and increasingly and encouragingly many tourism stakeholders have started to announce their own commitments and it is certain that tourism industry would have to play a major role, if indeed the world were to move towards sustainability.
After all, there is little doubt that travel and tourism industry is one of the most important sectors of the global economy. It accounts for about 10 pc of global GDP as well as 10 pc of employment.
Its importance becomes even more evident when one sees that unlike other businesses, tourism provides jobs and incomes to people living in even the remotest parts of the world, be it deep inside the forests in Uganda, up in the Himalayas or right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Unlike most other businesses, which are dominated by at least a handful of giants, tourism is very dispersed, almost democratic, empowering a 2-person business as much as a corporation that employs 20,000 people.
And there are few global disruptions to tourism. Even at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, tourism did continue, even if it was highly restricted and that was one of the reasons why people living in remote areas and in smaller towns or villages were able to manage with the harsh economic realities of the pandemic, which wiped off trillions of dollars of global wealth.
Thus, for any government or any economy, tourism is one of the most crucial sectors as its benefits reach every corner of the country and every section of the society.
Tourism is said to be responsible for close to 10 pc of global greenhouse emissions
But in many ways, and especially for making tourism more sustainable and accountable, it is also this dispersed nature of the sector that poses a major challenge.
Tourism is said to be responsible for close to 10 pc of global greenhouse emissions. But its impact may be more, significantly more, as it is very difficult to get accurate data about the emissions caused by tourism, directly or indirectly, in remote areas.
Moreover, alarmingly, carbon emissions from tourism rose 60 pc between 2005 and 2016, according to the Glasgow Declaration, which was presented at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2021.
Aviation
Global aviation accounts for 2.5 pc of the total carbon dioxide emissions and has contributed about 4 pc to the global warming that has occurred so far. And this contribution could jump significantly as currently only 10 pc of the global population can afford to fly, but with rising incomes, this number has been going up and is expected to increase further and dramatically.
The aircraft are becoming more fuel-efficient, thus curtailing their carbon emissions on per passenger/per km basis. But the growth in the number of flyers is so much faster that so far all gains in efficiency have been easily eradicated by the growing traffic. Thus, even though, the emissions by an aircraft have fallen from 357 gm CO2 per passenger-per km in 1990 to 157 gm in 2019, total emissions have risen from 500 million tonnes of carbon in 1990 to over 1.2 billion tonnes in 2019.
It is not just aviation fuel that leads to GHG emissions in aviation industry. There are several other factors and their impact on emissions and pollution is a bit more abstract and less well-studied than aircraft fuel. For instance, a lot of plastic, most of it single use plastic, is used in manufacturing and operating an aircraft. While manufacturing is a one-off use, there is use of other plastic products on a daily basis or even several times a day. These range from the ubiquitous water bottles and beverage cups to the plastic packaging of food packets, cushions and blankets and even ear-phones.
Then there are GHG emissions involved in last-mile or on-the ground connectivity which is crucial for passengers and crew to make it to an aircraft at the origin of their air travel and then to their homes or offices at the destination points. Add to them the emissions linked to airport operations – power, water, food and ground transport – and there are other hundreds of millions of tonnes of emissions that are made by or for aviation industry but remain fuzzy.
Hotels
Global hospitality industry is also a major contributor to carbon emissions and other impact on climate change such as biodiversity loss, excessive water consumption, waste generation notably food waste, plastic waste as well as chemical waste due to use of cleaning products and laundry. Another factor behind emissions is transportation, both within and outside the hotel premises. It includes guest travel to and from the hotel, as well as transportation services provided by the hotel itself, such as shuttle buses or chauffeur services.
There are studies that point out that tourism intrinsically leads to higher emissions and wastage. One study in Germany said that tourists eat a much more ‘emissions-intensive’ diet, such as eating more meat than usual and due to the presence of food buffets at hotels and restaurants. With tourists serving themselves more food than they could eat, there is a significantly higher food wastage on a daily basis. According to the German Hotel and Restaurant Association, up to 50 kg of carbon dioxide is generated per guest per night and more so in a higher category of hotel. Moreover, water consumption per person in five-star hotels amounts to 522 litres a day, which is the average water consumption of a family of five in many developing nations.
In 2018, the sector generated over 1 pc of all carbon emissions and the number is believed to have risen sharply due to spike in travel since the end of pandemic.
Yet, there is a limited window for the industry to get its act together. According to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global organisation leading the battle to save the climate, the hotel industry must reduce its carbon emissions by 66 pc by 2030 and 90 pc by 2050 for the world to achieve its stated goal of limiting temperature rise to under 1.5°C from the pre-industrial era, the basic condition as part of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
A daily cruise trip averages 300 kg of carbon emissions, which is much higher than flying
Cruise
Another sector of the travel and tourism industry that poses signficant climate hazard is the cruise industry. Cruise ships are known to be heavy carbon emitters. A medium-sized ship can generate well over a million tonnes of carbon during each sailing season, taking an average of only six months of sailing a year. Ships also generate huge amount of waste – human, chemical and fuel-waste – that is often estimated to be close to 400 million litres of untreated sewage dumped in the oceans during each season.
A daily cruise trip averages 300 kg of carbon emissions, which is much higher than flying, driving, or a traditional ‘land’ vacation. Additionally, the sulphur dioxide emissions from a single cruise ship can equal the emissions from 13.1 million cars per day, leading to air pollution and acid rain. Water and energy consumption onboard cruise ships for everyday of cruise and per passenger is twice that of average consumption on land.
With ever-larger ships being built, the emissions per voyage and total carbon emissions by cruise industry are only set to increase. Last year, Royal Caribbean International put into operations its latest ship, Icon of the Seas, the largest cruise ship so far, that accommodate over 7,600 passengers in 2805 cabins and has a crew of 2,300, making a total of 10,000 people onboard.
Though cruise industry says it is moving towards cleaner fuels, notably LNG, the shift is not enough to cut its emissions at the pace needed, if cruise tourism and indeed the global tourism industry is to have any real chance of even significantly advancing towards its stated objective of carbon neutrality by 2050, let alone achieving it.
Where is the money?
Even though practically all the principal actors have committed to reducing their carbon footprint and agreed to achieve net zero emissions by around 2050, there is little visibility of how they will bring it about and this holds true across the segments of tourism. Hotels are still going on building new properties and renovating existing ones without any transparency of the emissions that these would cause during construction or renovation as well as over their life-cycle.
Similarly, sustainable aviation fuel in itself will not bring about net zero as it only reduces the emissions per flight, but does not address the issue of growth in flights. And even its limited impact on emissions would be felt only in distant future as the production capacities of these fuels are far from what is required by the aviation industry worldwide.
Also, there is no transparency on the phase out of plastics from the tourism sector, with most companies only taking baby steps on a journey that is certainly a long one.
For the industry to achieve its stated ambitions, not millions or billions, but trillions of dollars of investments are needed and currently there is little talk and even lesser visibility on whether that money is being invested and where that money will come from.
Without the money on the table, tourism industry’s goals and ambitious plans of actions may just remain that. Plans of action.