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  • Published: 07 May 2018

The carbon footprint of global tourism

  • Manfred Lenzen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0828-5288 1 ,
  • Ya-Yen Sun 2 , 3 ,
  • Futu Faturay   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5636-1794 1 , 4 ,
  • Yuan-Peng Ting 2 ,
  • Arne Geschke   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9193-5829 1 &
  • Arunima Malik   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4630-9869 1 , 5  

Nature Climate Change volume  8 ,  pages 522–528 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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Tourism contributes significantly to global gross domestic product, and is forecast to grow at an annual 4%, thus outpacing many other economic sectors. However, global carbon emissions related to tourism are currently not well quantified. Here, we quantify tourism-related global carbon flows between 160 countries, and their carbon footprints under origin and destination accounting perspectives. We find that, between 2009 and 2013, tourism’s global carbon footprint has increased from 3.9 to 4.5 GtCO 2 e, four times more than previously estimated, accounting for about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Transport, shopping and food are significant contributors. The majority of this footprint is exerted by and in high-income countries. The rapid increase in tourism demand is effectively outstripping the decarbonization of tourism-related technology. We project that, due to its high carbon intensity and continuing growth, tourism will constitute a growing part of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

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Change history, 23 may 2018.

In the version of this Article originally published, in the penultimate paragraph of the section “Gas species and supply chains”, in the sentence “In this assessment, the contribution of air travel emissions amounts to 20% (0.9 GtCO2e) of tourism’s global carbon footprint...” the values should have read “12% (0.55 GtCO2e)”; this error has now been corrected, and Supplementary Table 9 has been amended to clarify this change.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Australian Research Council through its Discovery Projects DP0985522 and DP130101293, the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources project (NeCTAR) through its Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory, and the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (no. 105-2410-H-006-055-MY3). The authors thank S. Juraszek for expertly managing the Global IELab’s advanced computation requirements, and C. Jarabak for help with collecting data.

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Manfred Lenzen, Futu Faturay, Arne Geschke & Arunima Malik

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Y.-Y.S. and M.L. conceived and designed the experiments. M.L., Y.-Y.S., F.F., Y.-P.T., A.G. and A.M. performed the experiments. F.F., Y.-P.T., M.L. and Y.-Y.S. analysed the data. Y.-P.T., A.G., Y.-Y.S. and M.L. contributed materials/analysis tools. M.L., Y.-Y.S. and A.M. wrote the paper.

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Lenzen, M., Sun, YY., Faturay, F. et al. The carbon footprint of global tourism. Nature Clim Change 8 , 522–528 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0141-x

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Environmental Impacts of Tourism: A Framework for Analysis and Evaluation

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Tourism grew rapidly during the 1960s and 1970s, but it was soon realised that this growth was not without costs. The social, cultural, economic, and environmental impacts of tourist growth became subjects of serious study and research, and entered in the policy agendas of national and international organisations. Tourism is no longer considered a ‘clean industry’ as opposed, say, to heavy manufacturing. Tourism planning is advocated as a tool for controlling the negative impacts of tourism development and for protecting the very same resources upon which the profitability of the industry depends. However, many tourism development studies and plans as well proposed policies have not been (and still are not) based on rigorous quantitative and integrated analyses of the several dimensions of tourism, neither have they placed the impacts of tourism development within the broader spatio-temporal context of their occurrence. There are many reasons for this omission, the analytical complexity of the task and the lack of proper data being among the most important of them. This chapter focuses on the environmental impacts of tourism and proposes an integrated framework for their analysis and evaluation. It is a revised version of the original chapter which appeared seven years ago in the first edition of this volume. It keeps the essential methodological orientation and gist but attempts to refine the integrated modelling framework, which was proposed originally. Moreover, it addresses explicitly the question of sustainability, which, in the meantime, became a central concern in all discussions about tourism development. The first section of the chapter reviews briefly the literature on tourism and its environmental impacts and identifies the main methodological issues in their analysis. The second section details the proposed methodological framework while the last section discusses its advantages and drawbacks.

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Briassoulis, H. (2000). Environmental Impacts of Tourism: A Framework for Analysis and Evaluation. In: Briassoulis, H., van der Straaten, J. (eds) Tourism and the Environment. Environment & Assessment, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9584-1_2

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    LACK OF AGREEMENT. over desirable levels of development, necessary control, Tourism and Appropriate Development and preferable direction, of tourism. The close links between tourism, the environment, of sustainable development has resulted in expectations and development, have been recognized for many years.

  8. The carbon footprint of global tourism

    We find that, between 2009 and 2013, tourism's global carbon footprint has increased from 3.9 to 4.5 GtCO 2 e, four times more than previously estimated, accounting for about 8% of global ...

  9. Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism

    Reliable and comparable metrics are increasingly needed to better understand the complex economic, social and environmental aspects of tourism for sustainable development. "Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism - Lessons from Pilots" draws on 12 case studies from around the world. In each case, they show how tourism's impacts are ...

  10. Tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals

    PDF Article / Chapter Tools. Add to Favorites; Email to a Friend; Send to Citation Mgr; Track Citations; Download PDF; Subscription Options. UN Tourism Publications | UN ... UN Tourism is a specialized agency of the United Nations ...

  11. (PDF) Unveiling the Significance of Sustainability in Tourism

    Sustainable tourism is a form of tourism that considers its economic, social, and environmental impacts, meeting the requirements of visitors, the industry , the environment, and host co mmunities.

  12. PDF Environment and Tourism, Second Edition

    The second edition of Environment and Tourismreflects changes in the relationship between tourism, society and the natural environment in the first decade of the new century. Alongside the updating of all statistics, environmental policy initiatives, examples and case studies, new material has been added.

  13. PDF ECOTOURISM

    it is important to clarify that all tourism activities - be they geared to holidays, business, conferences, congresses or fairs, health, adventure or ecotourism - should aim to be sustainable. This means that the planning and development of tourism infrastructure, its subsequent operation and also its marketing should focus on environmental,

  14. (PDF) Tourism Impacts on Destinations: Insights from a Systematic

    Abstract: is paper aims to systematically review and analyse the current research on tourism. impacts on destinations for the period 2016-2020. e study evaluated 80 published articles. selected ...

  15. PDF The Tourism-Environment Nexus; Challenges and Opportunities

    the relation between tourism and environment stated the constructions and general infrastructures as the main source of environmental use of tourism in destinations. 5. Negative Impacts of Tourism Based on what scholars declare tourism development can impose both negative and positive impacts on the environment (Rezapouraghdam and Ghasemi Olya ...

  16. PDF Trends and Issues for Ecotourism & Sustainable Tourism

    • Nearly 50% said that travel inspired awareness of environmental diversity, promotes a culture that values the environment, and the importance of protecting endangered locations, species, cultures • Increased number of respondents who acted on their environmental concerns while they traveled (37%, up 5% from last survey)

  17. Environmental Impacts of Tourism: A Framework for Analysis and

    The social, cultural, economic, and environmental impacts of tourist growth became subjects of serious study and research, and entered in the policy agendas of national and international organisations. Tourism is no longer considered a 'clean industry' as opposed, say, to heavy manufacturing. Tourism planning is advocated as a tool for ...

  18. (PDF) What Is Sustainable Tourism, and Why Does It Matter?

    Abstract. By addressing the demands of its ecological surrounds and local populations, sustainable tourism addresses its current and future economic, social, and environmental implications. This ...

  19. PDF Environmental impacts of tourism

    environmental values and it can serve as a tool to finance protection of natural areas and increase their economic importance. In this paper, we describe that the effects of tourism on natural resources, environmental pollution and physical environment. In addition, we explain environmental impacts of tourism on global scale, industrial

  20. (Pdf) Sustainable Tourism and Its Environmental, Economic, Social

    Tourism has become an important strategy for communities to achieve economic, social and environmental benefits that can contribute to the development of tourist destinations ( Huseynli, 2022 ...

  21. [PDF] Environmental impacts of tourism

    The quality of the environment, both natural and man-made, is essential to tourism. However, the relationship of tourism with the environment is complex. It involves many activities that can have adverse environmental effects. Many of these impacts are linked with the construction of general infrastructure such as roads and airports, and of tourism facilities, including resorts, hotels ...

  22. (PDF) Environmental Impacts of Tourism

    other countries. The environmental impacts on tourism can be positive and negative; the. positive impacts are direct financial contributions, contributions to government revenues, improved ...

  23. (PDF) Designing for more environmentally friendly tourism

    PDF | The environmental (un)sustainability of the tourism industry has been debated for many decades. ... The tourism business harms the environment contributing 8% of total greenhouse gas ...