Climate change: Burden falls on every nation

Climate Justice and Tourism is to be the theme topic of a civil society summit to be convened, 10 December, during the final round of talks on the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change in Copenhagen.

Organised by a coalition of European non-governmental organisations, the summit will discuss how the travel and tourism industry will be able to cope with the potentially mandatory emission reduction targets while simultaneously striving to meet its own growth targets and ensure the economic upliftment of rural areas.

Among the organising groups are EED Tourism Watch (www.tourism-watch.de), Naturefriends International (www.nf-int.org), Institute for Integrative Tourism and Development (www.respect.at), Climate Alliance Austria (www.klimabuendnis.org) and the Ecumenical Coalition On Tourism (www.ecotonline.org) in cooperation with IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria.

The groups last week issued a statement saying, “It is broadly acknowledged that a new climate deal must ensure that average global warming will remain below the dangerous threshold of 2 degrees. In order to meet this global challenge, every nation, every industry sector and every human being will need to take on a fair share of the mitigation burden.”

Furthermore, it said, “those who were and are most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions must pay their climate debts and provide developing countries with substantial funds for coping with the inevitable impacts of global warming such as natural disasters, sea level rise, food shortage or mass migration.”

The statement said that the global tourism industry is a significant contributor to climate change. Taking into account other warming effects besides CO2, it is believed to contribute up to 12.5 % of anthropogenic climate impact. And tourism is a rapidly growing industry: its emissions are believed to more than double within the next 25 years.

“The travel industry declares itself to be aware of its climate responsibility and aspires to reduce carbon emissions throughout its value chain. However, in times where every industry sector is called by the international community to formulate binding reduction targets, mere “aspirations” may be not enough.

“This especially applies to international air transport as the biggest source of tourism emissions, which is still exempted from the Kyoto Protocol. After 12 years there is no identifiable progress in creating an appropriate climate regulation – a responsibility which was given in 1997 to the aviation sector itself. Instead, the industry announces the development of “sustainably grown bio-fuels” in order to continue its growth path.”

The civil society movements believe that “the trust in agrofuels must be seriously challenged given the long timeframe to achieve significant emission reductions and the huge land requirements which are likely to have impacts on food supply.”

The statement said that the travel industry “often argues that a regulative framework for limiting growth of passenger transport could have negative impacts on tourism revenues that contribute to poverty alleviation in developing countries (so-called “Spillover Effects”).”

While agreeing with that rationale, the statement said the same issue also then raised the question of distribution of tourism revenues.

“As a highly globalized economic sector, it must be questioned how much of the income generated from tourism eventually arrives at the poor population segments and does not “leak out” of the developing economies through foreign-owned tour operators, airlines, cruise companies and hotel chains or through food and drink imports.”

The question of how to achieve substantial sectoral GHG reductions against the background of tremendous growth forecasts, while ensuring that related structural changes do not hit those that are already the most disadvantaged within the tourism system, will be crucial for the travel industry in order to play a pivotal and integrative role in the world economy of the 21st century.

“The World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) – as the UN agency for global tourism policy issues – will need to act as a central platform for finding solutions to this, admittedly, challenging task.”

In another development, The International Road Transport Union’s (IRU) General Assembly, representing truck, bus, coach and taxi operators in 74 countries on five continents, last week unanimously adopted the IRU “30-by-30” Resolution, a voluntary road transport industry commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% by 2030.

Calling it an “unprecedented commitment” IRU President, Janusz Lacny, said, “After achieving a commendable reduction in toxic emissions by up to 98% over the last 20 years, which significantly helped improve air quality, the road transport industry is now ready to take up this new challenge and effectively contribute to ambitious CO2 reduction targets.”

This reduction target, to be calculated in terms of transport performance (tonne and passenger-kilometres), will use 2007 as the base year.

Mr Lacny added: “While governments struggle, most likely to no avail, to forge a consensus and limit CO2 emissions as a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen this December, the road transport industry publicly commits to provide better and cleaner rather than more road transport, and to effectively decouple road transport from its environmental impact.”