NEW DELHI: Tourism helps reduce mental stress and rejuvenates our bodies, but it has a serious downside — its carbon-intensive activity. A new study shows that the global tourism landscape contributes around 9% of the total greenhouse gases (GHG), with the US, China and India being the biggest emitters. The study that analysed data between 2009 and 2019 found the emission gulf between countries that travel the most and the least is almost 100-fold. India is the third highest contributor to carbon emissions from global tourism due to poor adoption of clean technology efficiency and rising demand for tourism.
Published in the scientific journal Nature, the study, ‘Drivers of global tourism carbon emissions’, shows how the sector’s emissions increased by 3.5% annually between 2009 and 2019, double that of the worldwide economy emission rate. Tourism’s emission increased by 1.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (Gt CO2-e) – from 3.7 Gt to 5.2 Gt CO2-e. It equals the annual emissions produced by all Latin America and the Caribbean countries.
The increase is primarily due to the rise in demand for domestic tourism. Here, China is at the top, followed by the US and India. There is a noteworthy rise in outbound travel from China as well. The study urged the adoption of tourism de-carbonisation strategies to align global tourism with the Paris Agreement’s goals.
India’s carbon footprint is quite low compared to the US and China. In 2019, India contributed a mere 5.7% residence-based accounting (domestic tourism and outbound). The US alone produced 1.0 Gt CO2-e, accounting for 19%, and China produced 0.8 Gt CO2-e, or 15% of the total global tourism footprint.
“These three countries were responsible for 60% of the increase in tourism emissions during the last decade — largely due to growth in domestic tourism demand,” said Roxy Koll, Climate Scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
New carbon-intensive sector
Every dollar earned in tourism generated 1.02 kg of GHG emissions in 2019. This is approximately four times higher than the services sector (0.24 kg/$) and 30% higher than the global economy (0.77 kg/$). During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, the reduction in global and domestic tourism led to a decline in tourism emissions from 5.2 Gt in 2019 to 2.2 Gt that year. The sector’s carbon intensity improved from 1.02 kg to 0.85 kg CO2-e per US$ (constant price 2009).
From a sectoral perspective, most net emissions were generated by air transport (0.27 Gt) and utilities (0.26 Gt). Travelers’ use of private vehicles also contributed substantially, with combustion engines estimated to produce net emissions of 0.29 Gt and petrol production resulting in 0.13 Gt.
The primary drivers of emissions growth are slow technology efficiency gains (0.3% p.a.) combined with sustained high growth in tourism demand (3.8% p.a. in constant 2009 prices).
The major driver of tourism emissions is the rise in population. World population increased from 6.9 billion to 7.8 billion over the decade, which increased tourism consumption.
The amount of money spent on accommodation, gastronomy and transport has constantly increased over time — per capita tourism expenditure increased from US$536 in 2009 to US$972 in 2019. In the meantime, clean technology improvements led to a decline in emissions of 0.5 Gt CO2-e over the period. China is the leader in adopting clean technology to offset its carbon emissions, followed by the US. India has lagged. It mostly offsets emissions through improvements in supply chains with little adoption of electric vehicles.
Inequality in carbon emission
Under both destination- and resident-based accounting, the 20 highest-emitting countries, with large populations, contributed 3.9 Gt CO2-e in total, or three-quarters of the total tourism footprint, primarily as a result of outbound travel. In contrast, the bottom 10 countries with the lowest per-capita tourism footprints are low-income economies.