Tourism and climate change: evaluating the extent of policy integration

Overcoming information asymmetry in tourism carbon management: The application of a new reporting architecture to Aotearoa New Zealand

“…With limited global commitments on tourism, a report that reviewed 34 OECD members regarding their state of policy-making found that “ current government policy for (tourism) mitigation is still in its infancy, and does not seem to reflect demands by global business to enact climate policy ” ( OECD-UNEP, 2011 , p. 14). The same observation was recently reported by Becken et al (2020) . They note that tourism climate policy is largely ignored within national governance and policy processes related to climate change, based on their extensive review of 101 policy documents from 61 countries.…”

“…To date, the universal inability to stabilize and reduce tourism carbon emissions is largely attributed to longstanding policy settings that give priority to economic growth ( Becken, Whittlesea, Loehr, & Scott, 2020 ; Gössling, Hall, & Weaver, 2009 ). While countries have leveraged tourism development to expand demand and consumption, there is a lack of meaningful and proactive strategies for mitigating tourism emissions.…”

“…In 2009, an ambitious tourism reduction target was put forward, aiming at tourism emissions reductions of 25–30% by 2020 and 50% by 2035 from the base year 2005 ( WTTC, 2009 ). Despite this aspirational vision, very few countries have identified cohesive tourism-related mitigation strategies and even fewer have yet implemented such policies ( Becken et al, 2020 ). One exception is the European Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS) for aviation, which since 2012 has required flights from, to and within the European Economic Area (EEA) to comply with a cap-and-trade system to reduce aviation emissions ( European Commission, 2020 ).…”

“…The absence of comprehensive measures of tourism carbon emissions (alongside long-established economic measures of tourism), represents a failure at the global level to develop and maintain the data systems required to inform national and global leadership in times of urgent transformation. This has hindered the implementation of tourism climate policy at multiple levels, including providing sector-specific mitigations objectives, defining workable actions, and providing measures that can hold stakeholders accountable ( Becken et al, 2020 ). As a result, the majority of tourism GHG emission reduction policies are mostly related to voluntary instruments among the WTO member states ( UNWTO, 2019a ).…”

Evaluation of Tourism Environmental Carrying Capacity in Diaoshuihu National Forest Park

“…To collect accurate data, a field survey was carried out on the DNFP, using section timing method. The research team visited the local statistics authority, and conduced field investigation and research, referring to The Yearbook of China Tourism Statistics 2018 and the development status of scenic spots in similar national forest parks [19][20][21][22]. The collected data were sorted and screened, leaving only those meeting the development status of the scenic spot.…”