Friday, October 24, 2008 Tourism linked to warming, acute poverty
WHILE the global financial crisis is prompting tourism stakeholders to prioritize efforts to deal with it, tourism officials ask them to also work on other tourism-related challenges with more long-term effects.
United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Secretary-General Francesco Frangialli cited climate change and “extreme” poverty, which are “intimately linked” to the industry.
During the 6th UNWTO International Tourism Forum for Parliamentarians and Local Authorities at Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort and Spa, he said greenhouse gas emissions generated by trips and stays account for some five percent of worldwide emissions, while warming caused by human activities like agriculture and transport alters the conditions of tourism development.
“Tourism contributes to global warming, but it is also its victim at the same time,” he said.
During his presentation, Shahram Saber, Pacific Asia Travel Association regional director for Asia, cited aviation liberalization and global air fleet as some factors that have a clear impact on climate change.
But several international organizations are now considering sustainability as a business asset and being “green” as a business fundamental. For instance, the International Air Transport Association is targeting 25 percent fuel efficiency and 50 percent noise reduction by 2020 through a comprehensive industry approach and government support.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, governments and infrastructure providers can eliminate up to 12 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from aviation if they address airspace and airport inefficiencies.
“Agreed global standards would facilitate much better outcomes for the collective contribution of the industry towards addressing our challenges,” said Saber.
Frangialli noted the mounting pressure in some developed countries, where environmentalists are calling consumers to abstain from foreign travel to reduce dioxide emissions.
“They say, ‘Don’t fly from Europe to the Philippines, and you will save four to six tons of carbon.’ We cannot accept this overly simplistic approach to the problem. A country like the Philippines, which received three million foreign visitors last year and captured some $5 billion in receipts, would be one of the first victims of such a short-sighted policy,” he said.
As a poverty alleviation tool, tourism has contributed nearly $300 billion in foreign exchange income to developing countries and emerging economies where many jobs are created by tourism, Frangialli said.
To address these two concerns, the UNWTO has also organized the annual International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism that is expected to produce a multilateral instrument next year that will be adopted to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.
The organization also established the Sustainable Tourism for Eliminating Poverty (ST-EP) initiative, which has launched its initial activities aimed at encouraging sustainable tourism to eliminate poverty, particularly in the least developed countries. (NRC)
