Literature Review
Tourism’s basic purpose is to visit other places, cultures, traditions and expand one’s experience of the world. That is why Murphy (2013) argued that tourism is natural renewable resource industry in which visitors visit only to admire. However, tourism is so popular that this industry is producing 5% of the world GDP currently (“United Nations Environment Programme,” 2014). Hence, with the growing amount of money in tourism, the tourism industry is becoming recklessly extravagant when it comes to exploiting resources and harming the planet. But in tourism, sustainability is important to avoid noxious effects on people, environment and the overall industry as well. In this literature review, we understand sustainable tourism, its pros and cons, and then we review literature on how tourism industry is going against the ideology of sustainable development by increasing global warming and carbon emission, engendering sea levels and so on. All this is studied generally as well as according to the Marina Bay sands Hotel, Singapore, the selected location.
Getting sustainable tourism is a continuous process and it requires proper monitoring and introduction of the necessary precautions (“Making Tourism More Sustainable,” n.d). UNWTO defines sustainable tourism as “tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and the host communities” (“Making Tourism More Sustainable,” n.d). Thus, UNWTO gives three essential aspects of sustainable tourism. They are: 1) optimal use of environmental resources, 2) respecting the social and cultural values of host countries, and 3) ensuring long term economic benefits for all stakeholders i.e., least exploitation (“Making Tourism More Sustainable,” n.d). So, for sustainable tourism, proper policies should be made, infrastructure ought to be built and exploitation need to be kept at its least. One may notice here that the environmental issues, stereotypes about host countries and exploitation of resources and poor labor done by tourism industry are a great concern. In the next section, we shed light on how growing tourism industry has become a threat to our environment.
Carbon Emission and Carbon Footprints
Carbon dioxide emitted due to actions like deforesting, burning of fossil fuels for transportation and other energy requirements that leads to climate change especially sea level rise and global warming. Gossling et al. (2009) argues that activities such as fossil fuel burning for tourists’ transportation and deforestation for hotels and tourist development increase carbon dioxide emission. This emission leads to greenhouse effect, which causes global warming. In other words, an increase in tourism is leading to climate change involving global warming. Gossling et al. (2002) further argues and explains that such climate changes are also giving rise to sea level and making glaciers melt quickly leading to floods, sea storms and other disastrous conditions for humanity. Above all, tourism is increasing every year, forecasts for carbon dioxide emission are also increasing continuously. Also, since tourism increase leads to carbon dioxide emission increase, which increases global warming, which is not only harms humanity, but also makes tourism unsuitable in various regions (Giles & Perry, 1998). Hence, Gossling et.al (2009) argued that climate change, tourism and development make policy and planning a huge dilemma for them i.e., sustainable tourism becomes an impossible task (100).
Carbon dioxide emission leads to carbon footprints, which is the amount of CO2 emitted, as defined by Wiedmann and Minx (2008), as a direct or indirect effect of an action. In case of tourism carbon footprints may exist because of fuel used in transportation, deforestation for building hotels and other touristic spots and so on. Research has shown that only 5% of carbon dioxide is omitted by tourism (Gossling, 2009, p.105). Besides this, industrialized nations show higher level of mobility and according to the reports, there was 11% emission of CO2 and is expected to be 16% by 2020 (Gossling et al., 2010, p.120). Hence, there are serious concerns over carbon dioxide emission due to growing tourism industry. So, the question is about measures that need to be taken to prevent such levels of carbon dioxide emission or neutralize its effects.
Carbon Offset and Carbon Neutrality
U.S. Department of State (2007) defines carbon offset as a process through which Carbon emission is reduced by taking the emission to some other grounds where it could be used positively or by compensating for the emission. Energy efficiency, energy conservation, fuel switching and carbon capture and sequestration are among some of the most commonly used methods for carbon offsetting (“U.S. Department of State,” 2007). Many scholars have written on carbon offsetting and neutralizing its effects. Vandenbergh and Steinemann (2007) argue that carbon emission needs to be reduced down by 60 to 80% in the long run for preventing its harmful effects. And for that purpose, they further argue, that not only factories and industries need to be regulated, but households and individuals as well as one-third of American carbon emission, which is greater than total emission of several continents and countries, is done at individual level (p. 1673). Thus, for offsetting such carbon emission, energy efficient household appliances, fuel efficient vehicles, etc should be used conservatively. Similarly, then at factory, industry, market and government level efforts need to be taken for mitigating climate change by carbon offsetting. Lovell et al. (2009) explain that between 2005 and 2006 voluntary carbon offset market grew by 200%. However, voluntary efforts are not enough and strict measures need to be taken.
Similarly, carbon neutrality, following from carbon offsetting is defined as have a net carbon emission credit to be zero that could be done in either of the following two: buying off carbon credits to compensate for the emission harms or balancing off the carbon emission by offsetting or sequestering equal amount of carbon (Gossling, 2009). Gossling (2009) analyzes UNWTO’s Davos declaration that assigns responsibilities to various stakeholders for carbon neutrality or reduction. He argues that many tourism destinations and stakeholders are planning to become carbon neutral for reducing greenhouse gas emission. This should be helpful in reducing global warming. However, as Gossling (2009) argues, its ethicality and practicality in its fullest sense is quite questionable.
Sustainable Tourism Indicators
For sustainable tourism, UNWTO has been promoting sustainable tourism indicators that are suggested due to their practical information sources and examples. These indicators are destination specific and each country is supposed to follow their indicators for controlling and preventing carbon emission due to tourism (“Sustainable Development of Tourism,” n.d).
Purpose:
The purpose of different tourism indicators is to know beforehand when the limit is being crossed and what measures need to be taken in a particular breach of limit. Although, the particulars of the measures to be taken vary from country to country and region to region, however, the vision, outline and objectives are the same and very clear that the tourism management, development and environment need to be considered and worked on in one picture for a sustainable development of tourism (“Sustainable Development of Tourism,” n.d).
Characteristics of Effective Indicators:
There are six types of indicators, basically, which are species a) disappearances rate, b) crime rates, c) occupancy and satisfaction, d) deforestation rates, e) costs and repairs, and f) pollution levels. They indicate about tourism management, climate and atmosphere condition and future impacts (Yunis, 2006). They can be expressed in quantitative and qualitative terms (Yunis, 2006).
Benefits:
The sustainable tourism indicators are meant to promote sustainable tourism. Hence they have a lot of benefits for policy making and destination planning, development and management (“Sustainable Development of Tourism,” n.d). Some benefits include lower costs, better decision making, preventing future harms by taking precautionary measures, accountability and constant monitoring (Yunis, 2006). Moreover, they also highlight the problems that are appearing as real warning signs so one may focus more on them (Yunis, 2006). In short, they are very helpful in reducing down negative effects of growing tourism industry.
Hence, tourism is the root of economy for any country. However, its noxious effects should be dealt with in stronger and stricter ways.
References
Giles, A. R., & Perry, A. H. (1998). The use of a temporal analogue to investigate the possible impact of projected global warming on the UK tourist industry. Tourism management, 19(1), 75-80.
Gössling, S., Hall, C. M., Peeters, P., & Scott, D. (2010). The future of tourism: can tourism growth and climate policy be reconciled? A mitigation perspective. Tourism Recreation Research, 35(2), 119-130.
Gössling, S. (2009). Carbon neutral destinations: A conceptual analysis.Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 17(1), 17-37.
Gössling, S., Hall, C. M., & Scott, D. (2009). The challenges of tourism as a development strategy in an era of global climate change. Rethinking development in a carbon-constrained world. Development cooperation and climate change, 100-119.
Gössling, S., Hansson, C. B., Hörstmeier, O., & Saggel, S. (2002). Ecological footprint analysis as a tool to assess tourism sustainability. Ecological economics, 43(2), 199-211.
Lovell, H., Bulkeley, H., & Liverman, D. (2009). Carbon offsetting: sustaining consumption?. Environment and planning. A, 41(10), 2357-2379.
Making Tourism More Sustainable - A Guide for Policy Makers. (n.d.). Sustainable Development of Tourism. Retrieved October 27, 2014, from http://sdt.unwto.org/content/about-us-5
Murphy, P. E. (2013). Tourism: A community approach (Vol. 4). Routledge.
Sustainable Development of Tourism. (n.d.). Indicators of Sustainability for Tourism Destinations. Retrieved October 29, 2014, from http://sdt.unwto.org/en/content/indicators-sustainability-tourism-destinations
United Nations Environment Programme, (2014). Facts and Figures about Tourism. [online] Available at: http://www.unep.org/resourceefficiency/Business/SectoralActivities/Tourism/FactsandFiguresaboutTourism/tabid/78771/Default.aspx [Accessed 29 Oct. 2014].
U.S. Department of State. (2007). Fourth Climate Action Report to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change: Projected Greenhouse Gass Emission. U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, USA. Available at: http://www.state.gov/e/oes/rls/rpts/car4/90324.htm [Accessed 29 Oct. 2014].
Vandenbergh, M. P., & Steinemann, A. C. (2007). Carbon-Neutral Individual, The. NYUL Rev., 82, 1673-1745.
Wiedmann, T., & Minx, J. (2008). A definition of ‘carbon footprint’. Ecological economics research trends, 1, 1-11.
Yunis, E. (2006, July 17). INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON TOURISM STATISTICS. United Nations Statistics Division. Retrieved October 29, 2014, from https://unstats.un.org/unsd/tradeserv/Workshops/Madrid/UNWTO%20presentation%20-%20item19.pdf
