Tourism, Climate Change and Development - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 345

emissions from international aviation in Annex I nations, little progress has
been made towards reductions (Scott et al. , 2012a).
The European Union (EU) emission policy target is a reduction of 20%
by 2020 and some countries, such as the UK and Sweden, are already discuss-
ing cuts of 80% by 2050 (over the base year 1990) (Gössling & Hall, 2008).
The EU included aviation in an emission trading scheme (EU ETS) at the
start of 2012 (European Parliament and Council, 2009), but deferred applica-
tion of the scheme to flights operated to and from countries outside the ETS
in November 2012 ostensibly because of progress in global aviation emissions
negotiations (European Commission, 2012). Nevertheless, the EU ETS will
not significantly change tourism flows or reduce absolute aviation sector
emissions in its current form (Gössling et al. , 2008; Mayor & Tol, 2007; Scott
et al. , 2010, 2012b).
Although the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has a long-
term aspirational goal to reduce aviation net carbon emissions by 50% by
2050, compared to 2005 levels (International Civil Aviation Organization,
2009), airlines are highly unlikely to meet this goal because of limitations in
potential technical and management efficiency gains and the political diffi-
culties in securing the massive land area required to cultivate sufficient bio-
fuels (Scott et al. , 2010, 2012b). Clearly, growth in leisure mobility is such
that even under the best scenarios of technology and air traffic control man-
agement (Peeters et al. , 2009) there will be a growing gap between the
increase in absolute emissions and post-Kyoto emission reduction needs
(Dubois et al. , 2011; Gössling et al. , 2013).
Factors leading to the changing attractiveness of aviation
accessed destinations
Apart from climate policies, at least three other major factors may affect
aviation-based tourism in the future. These include fuel price developments;
consumer awareness of the environmental impact of air travel and/or envi-
ronmental change at the destination, which may affect the travel behaviour
of environmentally aware tourists; and threats to economic and politi-
cal security (Scott et al. , 2012b). Consequently, climate policy is only one of
several factors that can affect tourism in developing countries, and a compre-
hensive analysis of the risk to developing country destinations should take
all of these into account. Yet, it is unclear how the combined effect of vola-
tile, and potentially high fuel price developments, emissions trading and
growing customer environmental awareness, will affect arrivals in develop-
ing countries. Gössling et al. (2008) focused specifically on the consequences
of emission trading on arrivals in developing countries. Using a similar mod-
elling approach to examine the implications of climate policy and oil prices
for Caribbean nation destinations, Pentelow and Scott (2011) found that
growth in region-wide arrivals would decline no more than 4.3% versus BAU