Major challenges

Tourism’s prime challenge in contributing to Goal 13 is to drastically reduce its impact on climate change. Its emissions are forecasted to increase rapidly in the coming decades, from 1101 Mt CO2 in 2010 to 2957 Mt CO2 by 2050 (Gössling & Peeters, 2015); the result of rapid volume and distance growth, notably through air travel. With most other large economic sectors decreasing their emissions, tourism’s share in anthropogenic emissions will increase dramatically. Given these trends, tourism emissions would take up the entire global CO2 budget in a 2°C scenario (i.e. keeping global warming below two degrees Celsius) by mid-century (Scott, Peeters, & Gössling, 2010).

There is scientific agreement that only a combination of technological and operational improvements, together with much needed behaviour change, could reduce tourism emissions sufficiently (see e.g. Peeters, Higham, Kutzner, Cohen, & Gössling, 2016). There are plenty of difficulties here. For example, a change in travel behaviour among consumers appears hard to reach, though the BookDifferent and Werfenweng cases are steps in the right direction.

Further, technological measures like the development and large-scale implementation of biofuels need to be considered carefully, as these may negatively affect other SDGs and many do not score well in contributing to goal 13 (Peeters & Eijgelaar, 2014a). Also, heavily betting upon offsetting (see e.g. ICAO case below) cannot be a credible climate change strategy in the long-term, as it arguably leads to continued inaction and shifting emission reduction responsibility to others (Peeters et al., 2016). With such a large emission contribution from international aviation, it is problematic that the sector is not part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the UN – in relation to Goal 13 – acknowledge as “the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change”.

Surely, a challenge for tourism and Goal 13 is to find a balance with its contribution to many other SDGs. “Placing an emphasis on Goals 8,12 and 14, in which tourism is featured”, as UNWTO would like to see it (UNWTO, 2016), will very much endanger any positive contribution to Goal 13. It would basically be a continuation of past rhetoric that tourism creates jobs and hence its development should not be hindered. This, however, would lead to the forecasted rise in greenhouse gas emissions and consequently an increase of climate change impacts, also on tourism destinations. As these impacts are most heavily felt by many of the world’s poorest people, they endanger the achievement of many other SDGs. The poverty and tourism discourse has thus far discouraged dis- cussing the desirability of reducing growth in air transport (i.e. the largest source of tourism emissions). However, tourism must not only be seen as a source of income for Least Developed Countries (LDCs), but also in terms of its social and environmental impacts. As regards Goal 13, the negative impacts of climate change on many LDCs far outweigh any economic advantages of tourism.

Adapting to climate change is the third major challenge, though the extent of this will vary hugely between destinations. The burden will likely be highest in developing countries, but the questions of how to raise capacity (sub-goal 13.b „Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities“) and who is to bear the costs, i.e. touching upon the issue of climate justice, is not discussed by tourism actors. It appears that stakeholders (including national governments) are often quite well-informed about the potential impacts on tourism, but not concerned enough to take action (Scott et al., 2012), endangering a positive contribution to sub-goal 13.2. (Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning).