The ugly side of travel: Is your hobby leaving a massive carbon footprint behind?

Traveling is an expensive pastime but increasingly popular, especially with several platforms, online and offline, ensuring that you think about it several times a day. Instagram is full of people posting images of all the well-known and not-so-well-known places or expressing their desire to travel there. No wonder, traveling, and where you go, has become a statement, passion, fashion and something you must do, several times a year because YOLO (you only live once)!

Undoubtedly, traveling is fun and tourism contributes significantly to the global economy. In fact, tourism’s share in the global gross domestic product is forecasted to grow at an annual rate of 4%, thus outpacing many other economic sectors. But not all is good about tourism.

A recent study titled ‘The Carbon Footprint of Global Tourism’, published in the scientific journal ‘Nature Climate Change’, tried to quantify the environmental impact of tourism. The report, compiled by a team of researchers from the Universities of Sydney and Queensland, and National Cheng Kung University, assessed the entire supply chain of tourism – transportation, accommodation, clothing, food, souvenirs, cosmetics and other goods, and identified carbon flows between 160 countries.

As per the report, “Between 2009-2013, tourism’s global carbon footprint has increased from 3.9 to 4.5 GtCO2e (gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent), four times more than previously estimated.” This accounts for about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The researchers further determined that this rise primarily came from tourist spending on transport, shopping and food.

While transportation has always been a matter of concern, the fact that shopping and food too have a significant carbon footprint is curious. Ya-Yen Sun, a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Queensland Business School, Australia, explains, “Together shopping and food contributes more than 20% of total carbon emissions. The production and delivery of meals and souvenirs require energy and therefore produce emissions. These two components are rarely mentioned in the tourism carbon footprint study and their significance has been ignored.”

The study focused on both travel for leisure and work, and made its analyses based on two accounting practices – residence-based accounting and destination-based accounting. Explained simply, the former measures the carbon emissions produced by a country when its citizens travel within or outside its boundaries; the latter measures the carbon footprint of all tourism activities within its borders by citizens and foreign visitors.

Using this method, the researchers come up with differentiated data to determine which country is the net destination of tourists and carbon emissions, and which is the net host. Thus, the researchers found that Thailand, India, Spain, Greece, Vietnam and the United States are ‘net destinations’ – that is, the carbon emissions created by their citizens going abroad was less than that created by tourists visiting these countries. On the other hand, Canada, Mexico, Britain and China were ‘net origins’, meaning the carbon footprint caused by their citizens travelling abroad was greater than that of outsiders visiting them.  So, if you live in Canada, you cause more emissions to other countries, and if you live in the Maldives, you bear more emissions caused by foreign travellers.

Where does India stand?

India ranks among the highest carbon emitters at number four – behind the US, China and Germany. The calculations in the study were based on factors such as its economic and environmental structure, the number of people travelling in the country, foreign destinations Indians travel to, etc.

Co-researcher on the report, Dr Arunima Malik, Lecturer, The University of Sydney, says carbon emissions caused by Indian travellers visiting different parts of the country is 224MtCO2-e; and when they travel abroad – 15MtCO2-e, which is about 240 MtCO2-e in total. As international tourists in India leave a carbon footprint of just 44MtCO2-e, much of the carbon emissions are caused by India’s domestic tourism. Also, the country is a ‘net destination’ of carbon emissions, because the emissions caused by Indians traveling abroad is less than that caused by foreign tourists in India.

This, says Sun, is of concern given the strong demand for tourism, and the high tourism growth forecasts till 2030. Tourism industries, she adds, have a low speed of de-carbonisation – the process of reducing the rate of carbon emissions – so expect a 3% yearly growth in total with regard to tourism-caused emissions.

Industry reports, confirm that India is witnessing an upsurge in both domestic and international travelling. On the online travel portal Yatra, 8.9 million passengers booked air tickets in March 2017-18, according to the company’s chief operating officer (B2C), Sharat Dhall. Nikhil Ganju, Country Manager, TripAdvisor India, says, “For the country’s 300 million middle class, urbanisation and rising discretionary income have coupled to boost travel consumption. The diverse tourism offerings continue to attract and drive an increase across all types of travel. In our recent analysis of the TripAdvisor site, we saw a staggering growth in the number of Indians planning to travel to Russia during FIFA World Cup.”

Possible solutions

“Travel less is one critical step. It is like consuming less of something that is energy intensive,” Sun says blatantly. Suggesting alternatives, she mentions improved technology in energy consumption to reduce carbon emissions caused by tourism. “For example, hotels can go green by using solar panels, and business firms can deliver their service/goods using electric cars,” she adds. “Many European countries are promoting ‘slow travel’, the environmental friendly way of experiencing journeys. The key ingredients of slow travel include importance of experiences en route, enjoyment of local culture at a slower pace, and use of low-carbon transportation modes based on environmental consciousness. Its quality over quantity in travel. From the production perspective, EU has also implemented the EU emission trading scheme, which regulates all intra EU flights.”

Presenting an India-perspective, Anumita Roy Chowdhury, executive director at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), says that the US and Germany have become highly motorised and car-centric with huge domination of airlines travel, and have already locked in more carbon in their transport infrastructure that is not easy to reverse. India has the advantage as a large majority still use public transport, walk and cycle. So, instead of repeating the mistakes of the western world, India will have to recognise the strength of this and invest in it. The country needs a stringent roadmap for local urban travel and long-range national and international travel, she says, recommending “a massive expansion of well-integrated public transport systems, non-motorised transport infrastructure, and restraint policies to reduce dependence on personal vehicles such parking policy, differentiated taxation policy, congestion pricing, among others. With regard to long-range transportation, we need immediate policy measures to scale up and modernise railways. Keeping in view that business trips form a major share of air travel, institutional measures such as IT-based remote video conferencing strategies are needed,” she says.