Tourism

vs

Climate Change

How tourism can improve society and slow down climate change.

Tourism vs Climate Change

Copyright © 2021 Martijn Steijn

Auteur: Martijn Steijn

Coverdesign: Maélla

Informative/traveling/environment...

ISBN: 978909034226

NUR 100

Contents:

Foreword

PART I            A CLOSER LOOK AT TOURISM

Ch. 1        How it all started

1.1       Definition of tourism

1.2       The first travel agencies

1.3       Modern-day tourism

Ch. 2        A closer look at the tourist industry

2.1        Industries related to tourism

2.2        How big is the total tourist industry?

2.3        Seven different forms of tourism

PART II      CLIMATE CHANGE

Ch. 3        What is Climate Change?

3.1       Climate change through human activity

3.2        The greenhouse effect

3.3       What is carbon dioxide?

3.4        Earth’s natural carbon cycle

3.5       The history of Earth’s atmosphere

3.6        Carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas

3.7        What are greenhouse gases?

Ch. 4        How to reduce climate change and why now?

4.1       The Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement

4.2       Our Carbon Budget

4.3       Representative Concentration Pathways

4.4       Shared Socio-economic Pathways

4.5       Shared Socio-economic Pathways in detail

Ch. 5       Popular ideas to fight climate change

5.1        Change our diet

5.2       Artificial food

5.3       Sustainable livestock farming

5.4       Seawater Greenhouse

5.5       Renewables

PART III      TOURISM IN RELATION TO OUR SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT

Ch. 6        Influence of tourism on the environment, economy, culture, and social life

6.1       In short: the environmental impact of tourism

6.2       Economic impact of tourism

6.3       Cultural impact of tourism

6.4        Social impact of tourism

Ch. 7        How tourism contributes to global greenhouse gas emission

7.1       The greenhouse gas emission of tourism in perspective

7.2       To travel or not to travel, that is the question

7.3       The rebound effect

7.4       The plane is taking off anyway

7.5       The responsibility for carbon footprints

Ch. 8        Negative effects of tourism on the environment

8.1        It isn’t only greenhouse gas pollution

8.2        No place is off the tourism circuit

8.3        Mass tourism

8.4        Mass tourism and resorts

8.5       Some specific problems of mass tourism

8.6       The impact of Eco Lodges

8.7 Spiritual tourism and the abuse of cultural traditions

8.8 Negative effects of volunteer tourism

8.9       Ecological farms

8.10       Tourism strain on infrastructure

8.11       The Lifecycle of tourism

Ch. 9        The relationship between poverty and our environment

9.1       An exceptional story about reducing poverty

Ch. 10       The tourist industry as an economic development tool

10.1       Three major economic sectors

10.2       Income Distribution Effect and employment

10.3        Elements of supply and demand

Ch. 11 Local communities and tourism

11.1        The many challenges surrounding community tourism

11.2        Dependency

11.3        They’re rich and we’re poor

11.4        Different expectations

11.5        The bias of communities against tour agencies

11.6        NGOs versus travel agencies

11.7       Care versus Tropic

11.8        Green-washing

11.9        A problem resulting from capitalism

11.10        Tourist expectations and reality

11.11 Should the remote communities learn English?

11.12       Are local communities able to organize tourism?

11.13       Mutual advantages of long term partnerships

Ch. 12 The importance of tourism on a global scale

12.1       The first example: advantage of tourism on the Galapagos

12.2       Conservation in the Ecuadorian Amazon

12.3        Gene exchange as a result of traveling

12.4        Traveling and viruses

12.5        Social benefits of traveling and tourism

12.6        Tourism can create a better mutual understanding and avoid conflict

12.7        The Fauzi Azar Inn

12.8        Traveling and trading have made the world safer

12.9        Some of my own travel experiences

12.10        People who travel receive many benefits

PART IV      TOURISM IN RELATION TO SUSTAINABILITY

Ch. 13 Is sustainable tourism possible?

13.1       Everything we do leaves a carbon footprint

13.2       The Carbon footprint of tourism

13.3       The official definition of sustainable tourism

13.4        Sustainable tourism or responsible tourism?

Ch. 14 How to make the tourist industry more sustainable

14.1       The responsibility of the tourist industry

14.2        The Eco Hotels of tomorrow

14.3       Sustainability recommendations for tour operators

14.4        Sustainable tourist projects

14.5       Izhcayluma

14.6        The danger of bookings websites

Ch. 15 Things travelers can do to make their vacation more sustainable

15.1       Fly responsibly

15.2       Natural carbon sequestration and offsets

15.3       Carbon offsets: atoning for sins of emission?

15.4       A few recommendable carbon offset programs

15.5        Be a more sustainable tourist while traveling

Ch. 16 Future sustainable transport based on the past

16.1       Sailing around the world

16.2       The best of both worlds: airships

16.3       Climate change and airships

16.4        Electric airplanes

Ch. 17 The holistic sustainable approach

17.1       Change our mentality

17.2        Create time to travel

17.3       Sustained salaries

17.4       Well-being above economic growth

17.5       The Doughnut Economy

17.6       Increase happiness with a low(er) carbon footprint

17.7        Indulging in experiences provides more happiness

Ch. 18 Space traveling to explore new areas and development

18.1       The advantages of space travel

18.2        Are we now afraid to travel into Space?

18.3        Space tourism to encourage new development

Epilogue

Appendix:

I      What is the atmosphere?

II      Earth’s carbon circle

III      pH value of seawater

IV      What is 1ppm of CO²

V      Representative Concentration Pathways (RPC)

VI      Transient Climate Response

VII      How to set up a sustainable community tourist project/ business

VIII      Building an ecologically friendly hotel

IX      How to improve the sustainability of your existing hotel

X      Sustainability tips for tour operators

XI      CO sequestration calculation

XII      Additional interesting articles about airships:

Special thanks to:

359 Links as reference:

Foreword

It all started in November 2019 with a conversation between two travelers. I asked a tourist in Ecuador if she would include a tour to the famous Galapagos Islands on her journey. She told me that she would like to, but that she didn’t want to fly to the Galapagos. To her, it was a contradiction to fly to a nature reserve more than 900 km away while the greenhouse gas emission from her flight might cause the sea level to rise and these islands to disappear. I had heard this reasoning before and it is a valid point. After years of working in tourism, I also wondered if it is still responsible to keep inviting people to travel as a tourist; to go somewhere new, meet new people, have a good time, and learn new things. However, when I explained to her what the negative effects would be if tourists would stop traveling to the Galapagos Islands, it made her think. She had never really considered how important the positive effects of tourism could be, even if this included flying. Her response prompted my motivation to write this book.  

The Covid-19 pandemic and our changing climate have put extra pressure on leisure travel and words like ‘flightshame’ are gaining in popularity. Some people think that we shouldn’t travel the world anymore, stay our whole life in the same neighborhood and don’t go further than where our feet or bicycle can bring us. But is that really a solution? 

During more than 16 years of traveling, volunteering, and working in tourism in Latin America I’ve seen and experienced both the positive and negative effects of tourism and even the Covid-19 pandemic. I agree that if we just look at the scientific numbers of contamination, then traveling is bad for the environment. But our society isn’t just about numbers; it is about people who, among many things, need food, homes, and a purpose to live. For many different people to be able to live and work together in peace, society needs rules, respect, motivation and goals. Besides that, we are born to be social and with a curiosity for the world around us. Most of us always want to improve the way we live. We want to continue evolving, either with more land, more money, more status, more friends, but also more knowledge and experiences. It would be wrong to take this motivation away, but it would be good to direct this motivation into gaining experiences, instead of possessions.

Because the relationship between tourism and climate change is also about the wellbeing of people, this book uses a holistic approach. It isn’t based on just one scientific study; instead, this book combines information from more than 300 scientific studies and articles mixed with personal experiences. 

I strongly believe that if we would cut traveling out of our lives, we will cut out a part of our social evolution. I don’t want people to be afraid to travel. Instead I want to encourage people to travel more conscientiously, share ideas, and spread hope. So I went looking for proof that would either support or undermine my own opinion: traveling can still be sustainable.

The questions I asked myself when I started with the research for this book were: 

1- What is climate change?

2- What is the real damage of tourism? 

3- What are the benefits of tourism? 

4- How can tourism be improved? 

5- Is it possible to make travel and tourism sustainable?

To be honest, when I started writing I thought that it wouldn’t be possible to find a good answer to the question of whether tourism can still be sustainable. The idea was to present both the negative and positive effects of traveling and tourism and to make readers aware of both. Now after months of research, writing, and re-writing and even taking the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic into account, I learned that tourism and traveling can still be sustainable. I even believe that tourism can be used as a positive tool to reduce climate change.

The best way to make progress is to listen to other people, to be open to new ideas, and learn from each other. Therefore I build the following website https://www.tourismvsclimatechange.org and started a Facebook group named 'Tourism versus Climate Change'. After reading my book I’d like to invite you to participate in the discussion about how we can make tourism and even our society more sustainable.

PART I:      A CLOSER LOOK AT TOURISM

1      How it all started

1.1      Definition of tourism

Let's first kick off with the official definition of tourism according to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The act and process of spending time away from home in pursuit of recreation, relaxation, and pleasure, while making use of the commercial provision of services¹“.

According to this definition in the very early days, when people generally only traveled to find food or to escape dangerous situations, you couldn´t speak of tourism yet. After people started to settle down, new reasons to travel emerged: trade, war, religion (pilgrimage), work, education, and even status. Traveling and people spending time outside of their normal environment became more common during the Egyptian and Roman empires, and it has been a constant factor of human culture ever since. Traveling for fun was still something exclusive for the rich or the real adventurers, and tourism as we currently know it took many more years to develop.

1.2      The first travel agencies

According to Wikipedia² Cox & Kings³ is considered to be the first modern travel agency. The company's history stretches back to May 25, 1758 when Richard Cox was appointed as the regimental agent to the Foot Guards of His Majesty's Armed Forces. His role as agent included the arrangement of payment of officers and men, the provision of clothing, acting as a go-between for the buying and selling of officers’ commissions, and acting upon any special requests from the regimental adjutant. Regimental agents did not have a very good reputation before Cox, but such was his honesty, reliability, and organizational ability that he made it a respectable business and Cox & Co soon became the agent for the majority of British regiments. After World War I the company merged with rival bank and shipping agency Henry S King & Co, creating Cox’s and King’s, becoming more of a travel agent for businesses, with strong ties to India.

The second oldest travel agency is called the Abreu Agency and was established in Porto in 1840 by Bernardo Abreu. At the time, emigration from northern Portugal and Galicia to Brazil and Venezuela were significant, and Abreu, a noted businessman in Porto, opened his agency to offer passport and visa services, as well as sales of train tickets to Lisbon and ship passages to and from South America. Five generations later, the company is still owned by the same family and their direct descendants.

One year after Abreu Agency, Thomas Cook⁴ was the first to start a travel agency for the sole purpose of organizing leisure trips. Their history started in the summer of 1841 when its founder, who gave his name to the company, organized a successful one-day rail excursion at a shilling a head from Leicester to Loughborough. During the next three summers, Mr. Cook arranged a succession of trips, taking passengers to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, and Birmingham. Four years later, he organized his first trip abroad, taking a group from Leicester to Calais. This was followed in the 1860s by trips to Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, and America. At that time Thomas Cook pioneered the concept of affordable group travel tours. By establishing relationships between tour operators, transportation companies, and hotels, Thomas Cook was able to get deep volume discounts on travel services and passed those savings to its customers.

It wasn’t until 1924 that a British⁵ company published the first mainstream guide book for business travelers, the South American Handbook. In the seventies, their focus moved towards people who travel for fun and in 1996 they changed the name of their books to Footprint Travel Guides.

1.3      Modern-day tourism

While modern tourism might have started with the leisure trips from Thomas Cook, the real explosive start of leisure ‘mass tourism’ might have been with young people exploring the so-called “Hippie Trail”. In 1955 a group of British students decided to travel along the Silk Route of Marco Polo. Exciting stories about their adventures slowly reached the young in Western society and sparked the interest of the ‘rebelling youth’ from that generation. With the cost of air travel unattainable by the average young university student, they were excited by the notion of travelling overland by local transport, walking trails and hitchhiking. Although it wasn’t the first time that travelers went backpacking, many refer to this moment in history when the idea and culture of ‘backpacking’ really began to emerge. Those early backpackers were called ‘hippies’. They were mostly Europeans, Japanese, Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders who began their adventure in Amsterdam or London, before making their way to Istanbul to begin their overland travel via Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to Nepal, India, or even Thailand. The Silk Route soon became known as the Hippie Trail. Talk of paradise, beaches and legal drugs were strongly attractions for counterculture and youngsters eager to break away from the framework of society.

With this surge of new visitors, local bus companies jumped onboard to offer transportation, while other backpackers bought minivans and motorbikes to make the long journey. The Beatles 1968 trip to India further fuelled a desire to explore the East. Marijuana was readily available in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Nepal and until 1973 it was legal to buy local hashish or charas in shops. In an era deprived of the internet, travellers relied on stories and word of mouth to make their way along the hippie trail. Handwritten notes were also being exchanged along the route, which inspired the Wheelers. In 1973 they published their first mainstream guide book for the low budget traveler, Across Asia on the Cheap, followed in 1975 with their first Lonely Planet.

As laws began to tighten in Nepal throughout the early 1970s, hippies began to flock to the beaches of India. Goa became a popular spot. Shacks were built in the forests and were lined across the beaches. Meditation, free sex, LSD, hashish, ‘community life’ and electronic music flourished as Goa’s new inhabitants preached religion, spirituality and peace. However, it wasn’t all sunshine and happiness. Overdose and insanity gave rise to a dark undertone of the free life. Many travellers became sick or even found themselves in jail. The big impact that all these foreign travelers had on local nature and culture can be described as the first consequence of ‘mass tourism’. Their presence, actions and cultural exchange transformed forever the looks of Goa and other places along the ancient Silk Route and new Hippie Trail.

Following an increase in demand, traveling by air decreased significantly in price. In combination with a good economy in the western world and more free time (shorter working weeks), traveling abroad became more affordable and popular. More and more people started to travel for pleasure and tourism became an industry in itself. The unlimited information on the internet, the incentive from social media, and the intuitive use of booking websites have now transformed tourism into one of the biggest industries in the world. This inevitable expansion of the tourist industry has its impact on the environment and earth’s current climate. The difficult question is: “How much?” 

2      A closer look at the tourist industry

The definition of tourism is very wide and spending on tourism is spread out over many different industries. It is difficult to separate them from the spending from local people who likewise use the bus and go to shops. This makes it very hard to assess the real size of the growing tourist industry. Transport, hotel and food services, retail and entertainment industries all take advantage of tourism and are part of the tourism industry⁶.

2.1      Industries related to tourism

Over the years, tourism has become a popular global activity. Depending upon the nature and purpose of their travel, tourists need and demand certain facilities and services. This has given rise to a wide range of commercial activities that have acquired industrial proportions. Some of the industries that are more directly related to tourism are discussed below.

In the travel and tourism industry, the hotel industry plays a very significant role. All tourists need a place to stay at their destinations and often require many more services and facilities to suit their specific needs and tastes. Another way people might like to spend the night is camping. A lot of people like to spend time outdoors in more natural environments in pursuit of activities providing them enjoyment. Camping is becoming more and more popular among travelers who are worried about the negative effects of long-distance travel/ flying. People have to eat and often like to experiment with the local cuisines of the places they are visiting. Restaurants, and other food and beverage outlets are very closely related to tourism and sometimes even depend on it.

The transport industry plays a very important role in tourism; without it tourism probably wouldn’t exist. The success of a tourism enterprise depends highly on the accessibility of (local) infrastructure and the quality of local and international transport. Like the transport sector, the retail industry too is closely connected with the tourist industry. Tourists shop for their day to day necessaries as well as look for mementos and souvenirs. In recent years, some cities in the world have been promoted as shopping destinations to attract people with a penchant for shopping by offering various products, such as garments, electronic goods, jewelry, and antiques. New York, Paris, London, and Milan are the famous fashion havens of the world.

The success of tourism is in large part due to the efforts of travel agents and tour operators. A travel agent acts as an intermediary or broker advising on and selling the products (holidays) that are created by other companies (sometimes referred to as tour operators or third parties). Travel agents are often referred to as ‘retailers’. A tour operator is a company that creates and operates a holiday. In the case of a larger tour operator, this may mean that they have their own aircraft or other transportation services, their own hotels, and/or their own ground staff. Tour operators are responsible for the fine detail of the operation of your travel arrangements and have a defined duty of care towards you. Tour Operators are often referred to as ‘wholesalers’.

Travel related websites and online booking platforms like Booking.com, Expedia, Hostel World, Airbnb, Redbus, Expedia, Skyscanner, etc. made it easier for travelers to plan their own trips and make their own reservations online without the help of any travel agency. Travel blogs and websites take advantage of the new trend of information sharing online, by trying to sell their (useful) information and opinion to visitors and sponsors. Google has now even become the biggest earner in the ‘Online Travel Industry’. Not yet directly, but indirectly there is no doubt. This is because all the other travel websites pay a small commission to Google to be found online.

2.2      How big is the total tourist industry?

Starting in the 1990s, countries began analyzing the size of the tourism industry using a method called a “satellite account⁷”. Satellite accounts measure the size of industries that don’t fit nicely into classic industry classifications. They do so by agreeing upon estimated percentages that one industry is spending within other industries to calculate their total economic value. Classic industries include the petroleum industry, the fashion industry, and agriculture where it’s relatively easy to calculate their economic value. However, the size of the Space industry and even the value of unpaid household work are more difficult to calculate and therefore estimated with satellite accounts.

In 2000, the United Nations and several other intergovernmental organizations agreed to a standard satellite accounting method for valuing tourism that all countries could use. At least 60 countries have used this method to gauge the size of their tourism industries⁸. The United Nations World Travel Organization (UNWTO⁹) and Statista¹⁰ show now that travel and tourism is the third-largest industry in the world. This is after the service and manufacturing industries. It isn’t always going to be easy to distinguish the travel and tourism industry from the service industry. But we will get back to that.

The United Nations World Travel Organization is a trade body that raises awareness of travel and tourism. It represents the global private sector of Travel & Tourism. It provides a regular assessment of the tourism and travel industries based on the standard satellite accounting system. The latest available assessment¹¹ shows that Travel & Tourism in 2018:

• contributed $8.8 trillion to the global economy;

• grew faster than the global economy for the eighth successive year;

• generated 10.4% of all global economic activity (including direct spending on accommodation, food, entertainment, and transport, as well as investments by travel and tourism companies, and the spending of workers in the industry);

• contributed to provide 319 million jobs, representing one in ten of all jobs globally; 

• is responsible for one in five of all new jobs created in the world over the last five years;

• is the second-fastest-growing sector in the world, increasing its share of leisure spending from 77.5% in 2017 to 78.5% in 2018;

•  increased its share of spending from international tourists 28.8%, up from 27.3% in 2017.

• receives 71.2% of spending from domestic tourists. 

According to the latest partial update from December 2019, international tourist arrivals (overnight visitors) grew in 2019 with 3.8% compared to the previous year. It was the tenth consecutive year of sustained growth since 2009. United Nations World Travel Organization estimates that destinations worldwide received around 1.5 billion arrivals in 2019, about 54 million more than in 2018. It estimated before the Covid-19 pandemic, that tourism would continue its growth with 3 to 4% in 2020. How bad the Covid-19 pandemic is going to affect the tourist industry is very difficult to predict, but the damage is likely going to be felt for years.

2.3      Seven different forms of tourism

Tourism affects many layers of a society and its economy. How exactly depends highly on how tourism is presented, sold, and operated. Tourism can be divided into domestic and international tourism. In general, these two can each be divided again into three distinct categories according to the purpose of travel:

• Economical and medical tourism. Many people travel to other countries to earn more money, or to get better or cheaper medical care.

• Convention Tourism has become an increasingly important component of travel. People travel within a country or overseas to attend conventions relating to their business, profession, or interest.

• Recreational or leisure tourism takes a person away from the humdrum of everyday life. In this case, people can spend their leisure time in the hills, beaches, at sea, in the forest, a new city, etc.

The first two groups of travelers aren’t leisure tourists and therefore they’re not relevant for this book which is focused on recreational traveling and tourism. This type of traveling is completely voluntary and therefore the easiest to avoid. Recreational tourism, however, can still combine business and pleasure and is generally divided into the following seven groups:

• Incentive Tourism

Giving a touristic activity to your employees or best customers can have many benefits. It strengthens social relationships with employees and customers. Depending on the activity, this kind of tourism can be good to reduce stress, improve health of your employees, and increase productivity. On top of all, they’re often tax-deductible. No wonder this type of tourism is expanding fast. Today incentive tourism is a more than three billion-dollar business in the USA alone!

• Sports/ Adventure tourism

Since professional sportsmen and women travel to earn money, we can categorize them as ‘economic travelers’, rather than leisure travelers. Here I want to focus on the growing group of tourists who travel to a different location to perform sports for pleasure. Often their main reason to travel is that their sport of interest can’t be performed in their hometown. Think for example about skiing, surfing, and mountain biking, but also horseback riding, rafting, or even paragliding, bungee jumping, and other extreme sports.

More free time, higher budgets, more stress, and more awareness about the benefits of exercise have increased the demand for sports and adventure tourism. Although this type of tourism has several benefits on our physical and mental health, it does come with new risks. Yearly many people end up in hospitals with broken limbs from mountain biking and especially skiing. Often these accidents could have been prevented by providing better information and/or training. 

When talking about extreme sports it is especially important to organize this with experienced companies. Not just for your health, but even for the environment. Extreme sports are frequently organized in (fragile) natural areas. Badly (often cheap) organized companies care less about their environmental impact. In Huaraz (Peru) some trekking companies now add more weight to the load their donkeys can carry, so they can use fewer donkeys and reduce the costs of their trekking.

• Cultural tourism

This includes traveling to other countries, or even just locations, to experience and/ or learn more about cultures and history. Most people will think directly about visiting archaeological sites like Chichén Itzá in Mexico and Machu Picchu in Peru, but cultural tourism can also include listening to local music and eating local food. 

Learning about and from other cultures has always been an important motivation to go traveling. The main reason is human curiosity, although other motivations shouldn’t be underestimated. Many people just like to show off and say/show to others: “Look I’ve been there and done this”. Social media, especially Instagram and the increased ‘selfie-culture’ have strongly contributed to this type of tourism12,13. According to a report by ABC News, before 2015 the average annual number of visitors at the so-called ‘Horseshoe Bend’ in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area was about 4,000. But with Instagram to promote this location, the place is now being mobbed by an estimated 2.2 million people per year. That’s a 55,000 percent increase!

Cultural tourism can be very good to help develop an understanding of the world around us. However, tourism, especially mass tourism, will also change a local culture. These changes can be both positive and negative. How big these changes are and if they are positive- or negative, will depend a lot on how tourism is organized. More about cultural community tourism in chapter 11.

• Rural tourism¹⁴

The term ‘rural tourism’ has been adopted by the European Community (EC) to refer to all tourism activities in a rural area. It often benefits the local community both economically and socially. Rural tourism enables interaction between the tourists and the local people for a more enriching tourism experience. A variety of terms are employed to describe tourism activities in rural areas. Agri-Tourism and Farm-Tourism focus on agrarian activities. They often consist of recreational and educational activities on farms. These activities can include how to plant and harvest, milking cows, making cheese, or just visiting a local farm.

Wilderness and Forest Tourism may be implicitly included within notions of rural tourism, or they may be regarded as separate. Tourists explore the wilderness and natural beauty of a rural area. In wilderness and forest tourism, tourists travel to the natural habitat of plants and animals. It mostly encompasses non-consumptive interactions with wildlife and nature, such as observing and photographing animals in their natural habitats. Wilderness and forest tourism includes various tourism activities such as wildlife photography, safari, bird watching, trekking, hiking, etc. It is often a combination of ecotourism and sports but doesn’t have to be.

• Ecotourism

This form of rural tourism focuses even more on observing and preserving nature. Ecotourism is a form of sustainable tourism. Although all forms of tourism can become more sustainable, not all forms of tourism can become ecotourism. Since 1996 the official definition of Ecotourism¹⁵ is: “environmentally responsible travel and visitation to relatively undisturbed natural areas, to enjoy, study and appreciate nature (and any accompanying cultural features – both past and present). Ecotourism promotes conservation, has low visitor impact, and provides for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local populations”.

Green tourism is portrayed as a new approach to tourism development. It seeks to develop a symbiotic relationship with the physical and social environment on which it depends and implicitly seeks to attain sustainability ideals. Green tourism is similar to ecotourism and also refers to tourism in natural areas. It is however more commonly used to describe forms of tourism that are considered to be even more environmentally friendly than ecotourism.

• Volunteer tourism

Right after ‘Ecotourism’, selling volunteer work is another growing market in tourism. The tourist industry now offers a wide variation of volunteer tours and excursions. Most of these trips are in developing countries and may provide the ability to work with poor children or wildlife. Volunteer tourism, or so-called ‘Feel Good Tourism’ can be a win-win concept for both tourists and travel agencies. It is a popular ‘product’ that sells itself because it makes the clients feel good about themselves but whether the volunteer work that’s being sold is actually sustainable is a difficult question to answer. Sometimes it might even do more harm than good. See chapter 8.8 about the advantages and disadvantages of volunteer tourism.

• Mental/ Spiritual Health tourism 

Tourism to heal a tired body, fight stress, prevent burnout, or even find a new version of yourself is also growing in popularity. Traveling to improve your health isn’t new at all and yoga and spa treatments exist already for thousands of years. Until recently this type of travel was mostly for religious and rich people. But with a general improvement of income in many Western countries and an increase in stress levels, more and more people are now looking for new (exotic) ways to improve their health. See also chapter 8.7.

Where people and nature come together there is often a battle between comfort and survival. As humans, we always try to alter our surroundings in a way to improve our quality of life, which often comes with (high) costs for the environment. More and more people are becoming aware that it is important to protect the environment, both for our health and for future generations. Therefore rural, ecological, and humanitarian tourism are gaining quickly in popularity. The tourist industry has picked up on this trend. To improve their image many companies try to sell their products with the words “Eco”, “Green”, “Fair” and “Volunteer”. “Protect the environment and give something back to society while traveling”, makes a very good sales pitch. But is all of this ‘Feel Good Tourism’ really sustainable? 

Many organizations try to help to minimize the negative impact of tourism. They can even provide some type of eco or fair certifications. On a global scale there are still no official regulations about when a business or organization is allowed to be called “sustainable”, “environmentally friendly”, and/or “fair”. Therefore it’s important to have a closer look at the effects of tourism on our society, environment and climate.

PART II      CLIMATE CHANGE

3      What is Climate Change?

Our climate is a statistical description of the state of earth’s climate system. This climate system depends on the interaction between the oceans, ice sheets, and other land surfaces together with the weather. In this, the weather is the state of our atmosphere - its temperature, humidity, wind, rainfall, and so on—over hours to weeks. Climate change¹⁶ is a change in the statistical properties of this climate system that persists for several decades or longer - usually at least 30 years. These statistical properties include averages, variability, and extremes.

Earth’s climate is determined by the amount of energy it receives from the sun and its interaction with Earth and its atmosphere. How much solar energy the earth receives depends on the conditions of the sun and the distance between the sun and the earth. In the process between receiving and returning the solar energy it interacts with the whole climate system—atmosphere, oceans, land surfaces, and ice sheets. In a healthy climate system most of this solar energy is returned to space as infrared (heat) radiation. The difference between insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the earth and energy radiated back to space is also called climate forcing, or radiative forcing. The flow of radiation between the sun, the earth, and its atmosphere is very important in determining earth’s climate. Changes in our climate depend highly on the interaction with the sun, earth and its atmosphere. You can find detailed information in appendix I.

3.1      Climate change through human activity

Our climate is determined by many factors that influence flows of energy through the earth’s climate system. Climate change can be provoked by natural processes, such as changes in the sun’s radiation, huge volcanoes, or even just internal variability in the climate system like growing seasons. However human influences such as land use and changes in the composition of the atmosphere through the emission of additional greenhouse gases also have their influence on earth’s climate. Most scientists around the world agree that since the industrial revolution humans have contributed in a negative way to our planet's climate system. They predict that if we continue to do so, life on earth as we know will change drastically. Ice sheets will melt, oceans will rise, rainforest disappears, deserts will grow in extension and it will be more difficult to provide everyone with enough food and drinking water. The question is: “Are we still able to prevent this doomsday scenario and how does tourism fit in?”

The best book I’ve read so far about climate change was Heat¹⁷ from George Monbiot. Mr. Monbiot put a lot of effort into describing myths and facts about possible solutions to slow down climate change. However, he wasn’t able to find a feasible solution for contamination caused by flying. One of the few and surely the most detailed thesis¹⁸ I found about the relationship between tourism and climate change is from Mr. Peeters. He works for the Delft University of Technology and wrote his thesis in 2017. This impressive thesis (I recommend reading) was the result of an ongoing study for the United Nations World Tourism Organization. In 2007 Mr. Peeters and colleagues were asked by the United Nations World Tourism Organization to investigate the relationship between tourism and climate change. To be able to do so Peeters and colleagues developed the Global Tourism and Transport Model. Since 2007 Peeters kept improving his model and continued gaining more knowledge about the relationship between tourism and our climate. His accumulated knowledge resulted in his 2017 thesis. According to Peeters climatically sustainable development of tourism is nearly impossible to achieve as long as it includes long and medium-haul air travel. The main reason for this is the predicted combination of the increase in the number of flights together with the growth of transport volume. According to his study, it is clear that a ‘business-as-usual’ development of tourism volume will render the 2015 Paris Agreement goals unattainable, even if all other sectors mitigate their emissions to zero before 2070. 

No matter how we look at it, Mr. Monbiot, Mr. Peeters, and many other scientists are right. The carbon footprint we produce while flying is not good for the environment. Still, there can also be indirect advantages to flying and tourism as a whole. Even though flying is bad for the environment and tourism currently (right before the Covid-19 pandemic) causes about 8% of the total CO₂ emission it might be worse if we didn’t fly at all! In 2018 the tourist industry generated a minimum of 10.4% of all global economic activity, making it the third biggest industry in the world after manufacturing and service. What would happen to the world economy if tourism decreased? The Covid-19 pandemic provides already some insight, although no-one knows yet how far these effects will reach.

While researching for this book, I learned that the relationship between tourism and climate change is a complicated one. I also learned that there are many, many different numbers, calculations, and studies about climate change related to traveling and tourism. On their own, most of them seem to make sense. But when you start comparing all the different study results it is hard to understand what is really happening and what might happen, or not. The overall fact is that human behavior currently contributes to changes in the planet's climate cycles, hence Climate Change. How much we contribute to climate change and how we can reduce this, is and will be a topic of discussion for many years to come.

3.2      The greenhouse effect

The main gases that make up the atmosphere, nitrogen (78%), and oxygen (21%), do not interact with infrared radiation. However, certain gases present in much smaller quantities absorb infrared radiation flowing upwards from earth’s surface and re-radiate it in all directions, including back downwards. By doing this they hinder the outward flow of infrared energy (warmth radiation) from earth back into space. This is called the ‘greenhouse effect’, and the gases that cause it are called greenhouse gases (GHGs). The most important greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO₂), and methane. More about the greenhouse gases later on, but first it is important to understand that CO₂ isn’t just a dangerous gas that contaminates the air. It’s quite the contrary. 

3.3      What is carbon dioxide?      

The gas carbon dioxide (CO₂), one atom of carbon (C) combined with two atoms of oxygen (O₂) is an important gas in earth's atmosphere. It is an integral part of earth’s carbon cycle¹⁹, a bio- and geochemical cycle in which carbon is exchanged between oceans, soil, rocks, and the biosphere. Plants and other photo autotrophs use solar energy and water to produce carbohydrates (sugars) and oxygen from atmospheric carbon dioxide. This important process is called photosynthesis. Almost all other organisms, including us, depend on carbohydrate derived from photosynthesis as their primary source of energy and carbon compounds. In other words, all living things on earth contain carbon and water. Plants contain about 45% of carbon²⁰ and us humans also contain carbon²¹. If you weigh 100 pounds, 18 pounds of you is pure carbon. This while about 60% of the human body is made up of H₂O, or simply said, water.

3.4      Earth’s natural carbon cycle²²,23,24

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is just one of many chemical forms of carbon on the earth. All of these forms of carbon play an important role in the circle of life on earth. Research about how life on earth²⁵ began is still ongoing but most of life as we know it is based on the so called cycle of carbon²⁶.

Our carbon cycle of life starts about a billion years ago. This is when the first algae and later other plants started to use the energy in sunlight to convert water and CO₂ from earth’s atmosphere into food (sugars) to grow. During this proses, that’s called photosynthesis, oxygen is released back into the air²⁷. Animals (and even plants) need oxygen to breathe. But each time those animals, including us, exhale we are releasing CO₂ back into the atmosphere.

Through food chains, the carbon that is in plants moves to the animals that eat those plants. When those animals are eaten by other animals the carbon moves further up the food-chain. The animals and plants that die will decay, bringing the carbon into the ground. Some is buried and millions of years later will become fossil fuels. When humans burn fossil fuels to power factories, power plants, cars and trucks, most of this stored carbon quickly re-enters the atmosphere as CO₂. More information about earth’s carbon cycle in appendix II.

Carbon also moves from the atmosphere into the oceans and other bodies of water. The carbon dioxide that dissolves into the ocean is like the fizz in a can of soda when it reacts with water molecules and produces carbonic acid. Part of the carbon will be used by marine life to produce bones, shells and coral. When this marine life dies it settles on the bottom of the oceans to form limestone, one of earth’s natural CO₂ sinks. Increasing acidity of the oceans (among other things) interferes with the ability of marine life to extract calcium from the water to build their shells and skeletons. When the ocean's acidity increases, its capability of absorbing CO₂ will therefore decrease. Interestingly enough the amount of CO₂ that will be deposited into this limestone sinks depends also on the temperature of the water. This is thanks to the prolific limestone-producing organisms such as corals which live mainly in tropical, shallow and warm oceans. More information about acidification of the oceans in appendix III.

3.5      The history of earth’s atmosphere

During the Cambrian period, about 500 million years ago, CO₂ in the atmosphere was as high as 4,000 parts per million (ppm). Then the carbon cycle of life on earth started to take off and absorb most of this CO₂. According to studies Earth’s climate system maintained a fluctuating balance between 400 and 180 ppm over the past four million years, stabilizing the last millennia at 280 ppm. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution the global annual greenhouse gases concentrations, mainly mean CO₂ has increased by more than 45%, from 280 ppm during the 10,000 years up to the mid-18th century to over 400 ppm in 2019. In April 2020 the daily amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere even reached 416 ppm²⁸! This present concentration might be the highest since more than 14 million years ago! The increase has been attributed to current human activity, particularly deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels that took millions of years to be stored into Earth’s crust, combined with the longevity of previously emitted greenhouse gases. This higher than usual amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere contributes to the current episode of global warming.

3.6      Carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas

So besides being an important component of life on earth, CO₂ also plays an important role in influencing earth's surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. Its natural greenhouse effect makes life as we know it possible. Carbon dioxide plays a significant role in providing for the relatively high temperature that the planet enjoys. Without this greenhouse effect, the earth's temperature would be about −18 °C, compared to earth's actual surface temperature of approximately +14 °C.