More and more people around the world are taking tourist trips – often by plane to distant countries. Due to increased demand, CO2 emissions from tourism have risen faster since 2009 than the average for the entire global economy. They accounted for almost nine percent of total global emissions in 2019. This is shown by a study that examined national and international travel for 175 countries. Accordingly, Germany is one of the countries with the highest tourism emissions. Only the USA, China and India emit more greenhouse gases for leisure travel.
With the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, 195 countries around the world agreed to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global warming. However, despite technological improvements and policy measures that limit CO2 emissions in at least some areas, global CO2 emissions continue to rise. An important factor is private travel. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the tourism sector was the fastest growing industry in the world for ten consecutive years and it continues to grow even after the pandemic.
Growing desire to vacation – higher emissions
A team led by Ya-Yen Sun from the University of Queensland in Australia has now compiled how many CO2 emissions were caused by national and international travel for 175 countries around the world between 2009 and 2020. “Our results show that global tourism emissions increased by 3.5 percent per year between 2009 and 2019, twice as much as the global economy,” the researchers report. “Between 2009 and 2019, emissions increased from 3.7 gigatons of CO2 per year to 5.2 gigatons. This means that emissions from tourism accounted for 8.8 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions.”
The researchers identified growing global demand as the most important factor for the increase. Especially in middle-income countries, more and more people are taking vacations – and thus caused 57 percent more CO2 emissions in 2019 than in 2009. In high-income countries, tourism emissions rose by 27 percent in the same period. “The biggest carbon problem in tourism is air travel,” explains Sun. Private car trips also contribute significantly to CO2 emissions. In addition, there is the provision of supplies for tourists on site.
A lot of CO2 from German tourists
The study also reveals a stark inequality in tourism emissions between rich and poor countries: “The gap in per capita tourism emissions between high- and low-income countries is now more than two orders of magnitude,” explains the team. “The twenty countries with the highest emissions are responsible for three quarters of the global footprint.” The USA, China and India cause the highest emissions from tourist travel – directly followed by Germany. German travelers at home and abroad caused around 4.7 percent of global tourism emissions in 2019.
According to the researchers, in order to reduce tourism CO2 emissions, it is important to limit demand. Although technological improvements in efficiency can help reduce emissions, they have so far been too slow to compensate for the rapidly increasing demand. “To help the tourism industry reduce its emissions, we recommend reducing long-haul flights, along with targeted measures such as carbon taxes, carbon budgets and alternative fuel commitments,” explains Sun. “At the local level, tourism operators could rely on renewable energy for accommodation, catering and leisure activities and switch to electric vehicles for transport.”
Source: Ya-Yen Sun (University of Queensland, Australia) et al., Nature Communications, doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-54582-7