Search results

Tourism sensitivity to climate change mitigation policies: lessons from recent surveys

Because of its dependency on air transport, mitigating tourism greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions might become the most important challenge for the sustainability of the sector. Moreover climate change mitigation will be more and more in conflict with other sustainability objectives such as poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation through tourism. Indeed, tourism increasingly contributes to global GHG emissions. Transport, and in particular air transport, have the largest share in those emissions, with respectively 75 per cent and 40 per cent of the tourism 5 per cent share of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions estimated for 2005 (UNWTO et al. 2008). In terms of the actual contribution to climate change, measured in radiative forcing, the share of air transport is between 54 per cent and 83 per cent of tourism, depending on assumptions made on non-CO2 effects of aviation (Scott et al. 2010). Projections show a strong growth, with more than a doubling by 2035 (UNWTO et al. 2008). In a context where climate policies try to maintain global warming within the limit of +2 °C, this current tourism growth is apparently at odds with global emission reduction targets (Bows, Anderson and Peeters, 2007; Gössling et al. 2010).

Mitigation aviation's long term impact on climate change

Current issues in tourism: mitigating climate change in sustainable tourism research.

This paper adopts a problematising review approach to examine the extent of mitigating climate change research in the sustainable tourism literature. As climate change has developed into an existential global environmental crisis and while tourism's emissions are still increasing, one would expect it to be at the heart of sustainable tourism research. However, from a corpus of 2573 journal articles featuring ‘sustainable tourism’ in their title, abstract, or keywords, only 6.5% covered climate change mitigation. Our critical content analysis of 35 of the most influential papers found that the current methods, scope and traditions of tourism research hamper effective and in-depth research into climate change. Transport, the greatest contributor to tourism's emissions, was mostly overlooked, and weak definitions of sustainability were common. Tight system boundaries, lack of common definitions and incomplete data within tourism studies appear to hamper assessing ways to mitigate tourism's contribution to climate change.

Extending grassland age for climate change mitigation and adaptation on clay soils

Permanent grassland soils can act as a sink for carbon and may therefore positively contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. We compared young (5–15 years since latest grassland renewal) with old (>20 years since latest grassland renewal) permanent grassland soils in terms of carbon stock, carbon sequestration, drought tolerance and flood resistance. The research was carried out on marine clay soil at 10 dairy farms with young and old permanent grassland. As hypothesized, the carbon stock was larger in old grassland (62 Mg C ha−1) topsoil (0–10 cm) than in young grassland topsoil (51 Mg C ha−1). The carbon sequestration rate was greater in young (on average 3.0 Mg C ha−1 year−1) compared with old grassland (1.6 Mg C ha−1 year−1) and determined by initial carbon stock. Regarding potential drought tolerance, we found larger soil moisture and soil organic matter (SOM) contents in old compared with young grassland topsoils. As hypothesized, the old grassland soils were more resistant to heavy rainfall as measured by water infiltration rate and macroporosity (at 20 cm depth) in comparison with the young grassland soils. In contrast to our hypothesis we did not find a difference in rooting between young and old permanent grassland, probably due to large variability in root biomass and root tip density. We conclude that old grasslands at dairy farms on clay soil can contribute more to the ecosystem services climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation than young grasslands. This study shows that under real farm conditions on a clay topsoil, carbon stock increases with grassland age and even after 30 years carbon saturation has not been reached. Further study is warranted to determine by how much extending grassland age can contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Method for evaluating the heat-island mitigation effect of porous/water-retentive blocks using a climatic chamber

This paper presents a method and mock-up design for evaluating the heat-island mitigation effect of porous/water-retentive blocks in a climatic environmental chamber using ambient temperature measurements. To create the proposed method, the heat circulation mechanism of blocks was considered. From this, we specified the climatic chamber design requirements, determined the required components and equipment for the mock-up, and developed the proposed method for evaluating heat-island mitigation performance based on ambient temperature. Using the proposed mock-up design and method, we confirmed that both surface and air temperatures were lower when porous/water-retentive blocks were installed compared to conventional blocks. This method can be used to analyze the difference between surface and ambient temperatures under various conditions to quantify the heat-island mitigation performance of different materials according to ambient temperature.

Voluntary carbon offsets a solution for reducing tourism emissions? assessment of communication aspects and mitigation potential

Contrary to most sectors, to date the tourism and aviation industries have not managed to level off greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, effective mitigation through technological innovation or structural and behavioural change cannot be expected shortly. Airlines and tourism companies appear to use carbon offsetting as a last resort. However, offsetting is generally acknowledged as a second-best solution for mitigating emissions, after reducing energy use. This paper seeks to determine the mitigation potential of voluntary carbon offsetting by comparing public and industry awareness of climate change and aviation emissions, and attitudes to various mitigation measures with relevant online communication by 64 offset providers. Methods were a literature review and online content analyses. Overall, the gaps that were identified between awareness, attitude and actual behaviour are not bridged by provider communication. From this perspective, the mitigation potential of voluntary carbon offsetting for achieving reductions of tourism transport emissions is estimated as low. The same conclusion is reached by comparing carbon dioxide volumes of flight offsets with actual air travel emissions. Current sales of flight offsets compensate less than 1% of all aviation emissions.