Last week on Wednesday our paper on global tourism emissions was finally published online. It was a long road to publication and the results reported in the paper are sobering. But most importantly the paper also provides rich and detailed insights that serve as a strong starting point for governments and industry organisations that are serious about reducing tourism carbon emissions.
References
Global tourism emissions (2024). https://tourismemissions.org
Sun, Y.Y., Faturay, F., Lenzen, M., Gössling, S. & Higham, J.E.S. (2024). Drivers of global tourism carbon emissions. Nature Communications. DOI: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54582-7
Higham, J.E.S. & Sun, Y.Y. (2024). Surging global tourism emissions are driven by just twenty countries: Major new study. The Conversation (11 December 2024). https://theconversation.com/surging-global-tourism-emissions-are-driven-by-just-20-countries-major-new-study-244036.
Transcript
After several years of highly competitive research funding applications, three years of research and almost a full calendar year of peer review, our paper on global tourism emissions was finally published online in Nature Communications last week. I have made various mentions of this research in my recent podcasts and now, finally, I am able to speak openly about the published findings. This research was led by Associate Professor Ya-Yen Sun and her postdoctoral fellow, Dr Futu Faturay at the University of Queensland, and the scope, depth and detail of the research that they have led is truly unprecedented.
This paper is global in scope, analysing a decade of tourism data across 175 countries. The depth of analysis arises from the fact that it addresses direct tourism emissions but also accounts for indirect and induced emissions in the tourism supply chain. And the detail of the research lies in the fact that it addresses all sectors of the tourism economy, including transport, energy supply, food, shopping and all of the many other forms of expenditure (and therefore emissions) arising from both domestic and international tourism. The database includes the ability to drill down into specific data sources and emissions by both country of residence and destination country. It is the most rigorous, comprehensive and complete study of global tourism emissions ever produced –a remarkable achievement on its own, regardless of the actual findings.
For those who have an interest in tourism and climate change the findings will probably come as little surprise. For those in the media and wider public, there has been a lot of interest in the paper over the last week given the headline findings. Our paper has revealed surging growth in tourism emissions and alarming inequalities between countries.
We found that global tourism emissions grew 3.5% per annum between 2009 and 2019, a rate which is double that of the worldwide economy. The primary drivers of emissions growth are slow technology efficiency gains combined with high growth in tourism demand, in turn driven by global population growth. The biggest emissions growth within tourism came from aviation, which – as we have long known – is the Achilles heel of global tourism emissions. Aviation actually accounted for half of direct tourism emissions. This should come as no surprise given the absence of any global agreements on interventions to rein in high growth international aviation and maritime transport emissions. This has meant not only that these sectors have failed to advance meaningful decarbonisation pathways, but – worse still – have essentially been able to grow without restraint.
The study revealed that in 2019, global tourism was responsible for 8.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Tourism produced 5.2 Gt of emissions in 2019, a net increase of 1.5 Gt in just 10 years. The carbon intensity of tourism is also 30% higher than the average for the global economy, and four times more than the service sector.
The research also uncovered significant inequalities between countries. Just three countries produced 39% of global tourism emissions in 2019. The United States of America, China and India were responsible for 60% of the growth in tourism emissions over the course of the last decade. The twenty highest emitting countries contributed three-quarters of the global tourism footprint, with the remaining 155 countries accounting for only 25% of global tourism emissions. We found that the difference between countries that travel the most and the least is more than 100 fold.
These findings point to enormous challenges ahead for the tourism industry. As Ya-Yen said in our press release: “The sector is pivotal to global emissions trajectories, but the tourism industry has made very little progress in reducing emissions. If this same growth rate is maintained into future years, tourism emissions are expected to double every 20 years, which is obviously not sustainable.” It is clear that sustained high growth emissions threaten to undermine the future viability of global tourism. In the case of Australia, these are threats to tourism infrastructure and services, including airports, events and insurance, as well as natural parks, marine ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef, and biodiversity which are fundamental to Australia’s tourism product.
“What our study clearly identifies is that technology efficiency gains and infrastructure improvements offer no chance at all of achieving net zero milestones. As long as demand growth continues to outstrip emission reduction measures net growth in emissions will continue. This is particularly evident in the case of aviation emissions, where demand growth has continued to run far ahead of technology efficiency gains.
But the study does also clearly identify action pathways. Our findings can inform more focussed national tourism decarbonisation strategies that will allow countries that are serious about climate change to move onto decarbonistion pathways. This will require “demand volume thresholds” that align with national decarbonisation targets to be defined by countries, supported by tourism and tourism-related policies that align with those targets.
This will be most urgent in the case of the world’s twenty highest-emitting tourism destinations. A next step for our team will be to produce details emissions reports for individual countries with the top 20 emitters being a priority given that they produce such a high proportion of total global tourism emissions. If we are to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement these countries will need to reduce tourism sector emissions by more than 10% annually, to the year 2050.
Managing demand for air travel will be critical to this goal, particularly long haul international travel. The fact that in New Zealand the Climate Change Commission has recently recommended that the New Zealand government include international aviation and maritime emissions in national carbon accounting reflects exactly the sorts of actions that are required to address these high emissions. Our research also shows that governments must support tourism decarbonisation by electrifying national grids and advancing low-carbon transitions in domestic transportation, with moving away from petrol and diesel car use a major priority.
So where from here for our research team? We have created a website that provides a comprehensive account of all aspects of this research project, including a link to the open access journal paper, as well as a wide range of resources including an explainer video, press release, infographics explaining all of the key findings, a world map featuring key findings from selected countries, and interviews with each other the members of the research team. While we developed this website to launch on the day that the paper was published online last Wednesday, it will be the focus of continuing development over the months and years ahead.
One further initiative may be to make the tourism emissions database available on our website for use by national tourism organisations and industry bodies to inform their own decarbonisation strategies. The database also allows the opportunity to create dashboards for individual countries which can be updated regularly as data becomes available, so that progress and performance against decarbonisation targets can be measured and monitored. As I have already mentioned, this will be particularly important for the top twenty emitting countries.
Our research team is now focussed on working with individual countries on further data analysis to inform policy measures and decision making. The key sources of tourism emission vary enormously between countries, so it will be important to develop strategies that address the unique circumstances of individual countries. We have already received strong endorsement from UN Tourism following Ya-Yen’s presentation at COP29, and received strong expressions of interests from some countries that are determined to respond to the challenge of decarbonising their tourism economies. That is very encouraging.
Meanwhile we will also be seeking to secure funding to extend this study to allow for ongoing monitoring and analysis of tourism emissions globally. While our focus in this remarkable project has fallen on 175 countries globally, there is also much scope to present similar carbon insights for regions within countries to identify and target specific sources of tourism emissions at the regional scale of analysis, to inform local and regional governments and regional tourism organisations in terms of their own action pathways.
Ultimately, we want to help policymakers and industry leaders to understand the numbers, have clarity around the impact of the industry on global emissions, and take appropriate steps to align country tourism emissions with Paris Climate commitments as expressed in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). While our findings are sobering they represent a line in the sand, and a starting point that we think should usefully inform both strong government policy and research-informed industry planning and management in 2025 and beyond.
This is my last podcast for 2024. Thank you for listening – I really hope that you have found my podcasts to be thought provoking and interesting. Now my attention turns to festive celebrations with family and friends, and summer holidays. I wish you all safe and happy holidays and I look forward to seeing you in 2025.
