Tourists cause global warming

2007-03-22 10:53

Madrid - Holidaymakers may be ruining their favourite destinations through pollution and greenhouse gases, making the tourism industry one of the world's worst polluters, experts say.

A flight to that pristine beach and a few nights in an air-conditioned hotel room, when repeated on the mass scale of modern tourism, is all it takes to put the holiday business on a polluting par with heavy industries.

"Tourism is unfortunately one of the vectors of (climate) change at the moment and contributes, through its excesses, to the process of global warming," World Tourism Organisation (WTO) director general Francesco Frangialli told an international conference on meteorology in Madrid this week.

In 2006, 842 million people took a holiday in a foreign country and 40% of them flew to their destinations. That's 336 million people, or more than the population of the United States, taking trips which spew greenhouse gases that fuel global warming.

Total air transport still only accounts for two percent of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere, but its contribution is growing and tourism is one of the driving forces behind rising passenger numbers, Frangialli said.

He said 1.1 billion tourists were expected to take trips abroad in 2010, and 1.6 billion by 2020.

Tourism faces 'tragedy'

At the same time, tourism itself was facing "tragedy" if climate change continued unabated, Frangialli said.

As tourists pollute their way around the world, popular destinations such as the pristine but low-lying Maldive islands in the Indian Ocean may disappear as sea levels rise.

Tanzania's famous lakes, a staple of the African tourism industry, will dry up. In Europe's alps the ski season will become shorter, the pistes fewer and harder to find.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in February that by 2100, global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 C and 6.4 C compared to 1980-99 levels.

The most likely surface temperature rise will be between 1.8 and 4.0 C, it said.

According to a French weather expert, a temperature rise of 1.8 degrees C would translate to 40 fewer days of snowfall at mid-level altitudes of 1 500m.

The WTO has backed an EU proposal to include air travel by 2011 or 2012 in limitations on emissions and creating transferable carbon accounts in a bid to limit the greenhouse effect.

Such measures would encourage airlines to put pressure on manufacturers to produce aircraft which are more fuel-efficient, Frangialli said.

That could mean higher air fares, but some in the travel industry believe tourists would be ready to pay a little more to protect the places they love.

- AFP