Sustainable Travel

“What do you need to solve the climate crisis? The answer is, everyone.” This quote from climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe highlights the importance of collective action, which is crucial in the travel industry, an industry which is at the heart of the global economy yet contributes substantially to climate change. The travel and tourism sector contributed 9.1% to global GDP in 2023, but it is responsible for 8% of global GHG emissions. Due to these environmental externalities, many key travel companies have shifted their focus so that they are no longer solely prioritising profit maximisation and are now trying to mitigate their environmental damage. To ensure that the global tourism industry doesn’t continue to compromise our planet, sustainable travel practices must be adopted by all. In this blog post we explore three ways in which travel for tourism can be conducted more sustainably: eco-tourism, carbon emissions offsetting, and global environmental projects. Additionally, we will discuss how governments can support and encourage sustainable tourism through regulations and subsidies.

Ecotourism Destinations

Choosing destinations focused on protecting the environment is a valuable way to travel more sustainably. Ecotourism has the potential to empower local communities, foster cultural exchange, and educate visitors about the importance of safeguarding our planet’s biodiversity. Below, we highlight two ideal destinations for this form of sustainable travel.

1. Costa Rica

Ecotourism is the cornerstone of Costa Rica’s tourism industry, attracting visitors who seek a responsible travel experience. This sustainable approach prioritises minimising environmental impact and maximising positive contributions. Visitors stay in eco-lodges constructed from local materials, powered by renewable energy, and blending seamlessly into the surrounding landscape. Profits from tourism directly support local communities, providing employment opportunities and encouraging the protection of natural resources.

Despite its success in promoting sustainable tourism, Costa Rica faces several challenges relating to the wider economic and social impacts of ecotourism. One major issue is the fair compensation of labour. While tourism generates significant revenue, there are concerns about whether local workers receive fair wages and benefits – for example are they overly reliant on earning tips from visitors and then struggle to make ends meet during certain seasons (a concern raised in this study). An influx of tourists will invariably strain local resources and infrastructure, leading to higher costs of living for local residents and putting pressure on natural resources, potentially undermining the very environment that ecotourism aims to protect.

Travel to Costa Rica connects to the broader discussion on sustainable travel by highlighting the need to address not only environmental but also socio-economic factors – including labour rights but also access to land for local communities. Sustainable travel involves ensuring that tourism benefits local communities fairly and does not lead to negative externalities such as labour exploitation or resource depletion that reinforce existing structures of inequality.

Chumbe Island, Zanzibar

Another exemplary sustainable travel destination is Chumbe Island in Zanzibar which features in this YouTube clip. The island is dedicated to sustainability, with profits from visitors invested in its Coral Reef Sanctuary and Forest reserve. Its accommodation was designed with sustainability in mind: the island hosts 7 bungalows which are powered by solar energy, and were made using eco-friendly, sustainably sourced materials. This destination cannot be the sole solution for sustainable travel because the 7 bungalows only contain a double bed each, so it gets booked up quickly. However, Chumbe Island remains a good model for ecotourism destinations which has the potential to be replicated elsewhere. Although many travel companies may be reluctant to set up places like this instead of traditional hotels due to the potential for lower profits, governments could use subsidies and tax breaks to incentivise them.

Carbon Emissions Offsetting

An alternative to ecotourism is emissions offsetting. Offsets are a cheap alternative to reducing the use of fossil fuels in aviation, directly tackling the most polluting part of travelling. Offsetting is frequently available at check-out when purchasing flights, with travellers being asked to pay more to compensate for their flight’s emissions, which is then used to reduce emissions elsewhere. This leads to a short-term net reduction in the impacts of emissions. Despite its positive impacts, offsetting isn’t immune to criticism: it is commonly referred to as greenwashing – travel has wider impacts on emissions than flight emissions alone. Major companies are taking advantage of it and setting a financial scheme within the capitalist world. Airlines emit in their business operations more generally, and many offsetting programs that they fund lack quality or transparency. For instance, Virgin Atlantic had the Oddar Meanchey offset program in its portfolio, yet the forests supported by the project were cleared by the Cambodian military, rendering the offsets useless. Forest offsets only work if trees remain intact for a century, as trees store carbon by incorporating it into their tissue as they grow. Thus, offset purchasers reap the moral benefits immediately, but the debt is not yet repaid, and it sometimes never is. One option climate-conscious travellers have is to spend more money on a flight that emits less CO2, using sites like Kayak and Skyscanner to find and compare the emissions of these flights. Of course, this does not eliminate emissions entirely, and it’s important to keep in mind that many cannot afford to travel consciously due to high costs. Evidently, flights make up the majority of travel-related emissions, but the world lacks infrastructure for flight-free travel and this is impossible in many cases, such as from coastal countries like Australia.

Briefing at the Langur Project Penang in Malaysia on a trip into the rainforest. Photo by Paris Karakousis.

Global Environmental Schemes

Programs like Journeys for Climate Justice (JCJ) work as alternatives to carbon offsetting, as traveller participants donate the money they would be spending on emissions offsetting, specifically to aid climate change mitigation projects. JCJ allows donors to fund projects that lead to long-term behavioural change in the Indo-Pacific region and allows volunteers to help run events. For instance, instead of simply planting trees to directly offset emissions alone, JCJ donations support young leaders in climate change-affected communities with less opportunities to combat environmental and climate injustice. Projects include adaptation for climate refugees, leadership camps, and community engagement and education programs. Donors can also sponsor youth leaders for Yathra training programs. By funding projects like this, tourists are able to make a real, measurable, and lasting impact on the effects of climate change. Moreover, JCJ is not the only organisation offering these programs, there are many similar volunteer programs making a substantial impact globally.

Government Regulation

Combatting the impacts of travel on climate change cannot solely rely only on well-meaning citizens’ efforts. The individual decisions by travellers to visit ecotourist destinations, or to find ways to offset their carbon footprint will never be enough to deal with the scale of the global climate crisis. Governments and enterprises play a significant role in causing high GHG emissions. Governments rely on fossil fuels due to the money raked in by non-renewable resources and lobbying, and take advantage of dodgy carbon offsetting schemes, while airlines use carbon offsetting as it is cheaply available. Hoteliers accept that environmentally friendly changes do not necessarily attract more guests, and are expensive to implement. Governments must implement regulations and subsidies to incentivise tourists and make it easier for them to choose to lower their impact on climate change when travelling and make it profitable for airlines and hotels to implement eco-friendly schemes. With strict regulation and sustainability subsidies, it is less likely that airlines will contract with dodgy offsetting projects.

To encourage the aforementioned volunteering and ecotourism programs, we recommend subsidies for interested tourists. States could encourage similar projects to be set up locally by offering funding or tax relief for tourism organisations that create these programs, as has been done in Queensland, so that citizens can make a difference without having to travel far. This boosts the local economy and reduces fuel usage. Furthermore, local governments are key to providing sustainable tourism, as they have surpassed their neoliberal role of providing basic infrastructure, by taking an active role in policy and management strategies, such as the implementation of the Planning Act 2016 in Queensland, which requires accountability when minimising negative environmental impact in development. Similar regulations should be passed in all states and must be expanded with tourism-specific legislation. With state level and broader regulation, such as that of the EU, recently having been more focused on re-stabilising the tourism industry post COVID-19, these regulations would be helpful to shift the focus back towards combatting the climate crisis. Moreover, sustainable tourism agendas sometimes face criticism for their focus on economic outcomes and marketing rather than actionable, real impact on the environment – a problem that has cropped up throughout this entire blog post.

Conclusion

Choosing ecotourism destinations instead of traditional ones, carbon offsetting flights, and participating in or donating to climate-related projects are all key ways that you can travel in a more sustainable manner. However, due to the many issues associated with carbon offsetting which we have overviewed here, the other sustainable travel options may be comparatively better in terms of making a positive impact on the environment. We also recommended government intervention to make all three of these solutions more commonplace, feasible and accessible. This cannot be overlooked in the fight against climate change, as the burden cannot fall entirely on individuals.