India, the US and China, were together responsible for 60 per cent of increase in tourism emissions between 2009 and 2019, a study has found, attributing it largely to population and a strong growth in travel demand.
China’s domestic tourism expenditure expanded by 17 per cent per year over the past decade and pushed global emissions up by 0.4 gigatonnes, followed by domestic tourism in the US (0.2 gigatonnes) and India (0.1 gigatonnes), the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found.
Rising income levels, especially among the “emerging economic powerhouses of China and India”, too could be a driving factor, researchers led by those at the University of Queensland, Australia, said in the study.
They tracked international and domestic travel for 175 countries during 2009-2019 and found that greenhouse gas emissions from tourism have been growing more than two times faster, compared to those from the rest of the global economy.
Carbon footprint from tourism was found to have increased from 3.7 gigatonnes to 5.2 gigatonnes — with most net emissions coming from aviation, utilities and private vehicles.
A rapid growth in travel demand has led to the carbon from tourism account for nine per cent of the world’s total emissions, according to corresponding author Ya-Yen Sun, an associate professor at the University of Queensland’s Business School.
“Without urgent interventions in the global tourism industry, we anticipate annual increases in emissions of three to four per cent, meaning they will double every 20 years,” Sun said.
The author added that the trend does not comply with the Paris Agreement, according to which the sector is required to cut its emissions by over 10 per cent every year.
“The major drivers behind the increasing emissions are slow technology improvements and a rapid growth in demand,” Sun said.
The authors wrote, “The net increase in tourism emissions is unevenly distributed, with growth in domestic travel in three countries — the USA, China, and India — contributing most to the absolute rise in emissions.” If the world’s top 20 highest emitting destinations had contained their tourism growth rate by one per cent a year from 2009 to 2019, about 0.38 gigatonnes of emissions could have been reduced in 2019 — representing seven per cent of the world’s tourism emissions, the team estimated.
