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THE tourism and aviation industries risk being hit hard by both climate change and moves to solve the problem, a leading tourism economics expert has warned.
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Monash University Tourism Research Unit deputy director Peter Forsyth told an aviation environment conference in Sydney yesterday that climate change could be damaging for tourism generally and for Australia's nature-based industry in particular.
But he also outlined a scenario where fares could rise sharply under an emissions trading scheme introduced to limit the nation's carbon footprint.
The Government has yet to reveal its plans for an emissions trading scheme, which would see carbon permits either issued free or sold to emitters.
But Professor Forsyth believes it is likely to introduce a scheme similar to the one being introduced in Europe.
"Aviation and tourism will be caught up in the ETS net, exactly how is going to be an issue," Professor Forsyth said.
A model developed by the Sustainable Tourism Co-operative Research Centre estimates that a carbon price of $50 a tonne under an emissions trading scheme would add 15 per cent to a New Zealand airfare, 17.4 per cent to a Hong Kong ticket and more than 20 per cent on a fare to Britain.
The estimate assumes that the Government accepts a controversial claim that a multiplier factor of 2.5 should be applied to aviation emissions because they are more damaging than ground-based emissions.
The increased airfares and rises in ground transport costs would raise the cost of the New Zealand trip by almost 12 per cent, the journey from Honk Kong by about 11 per cent and the British holiday by almost 15 per cent.
Professor Forsyth said the numbers were part of "a bad-case but not the worst-case" scenario designed to give the tourism industry an idea of orders of magnitude of the impact of an emissions trading scheme.
"Clearly, these sorts of orders of magnitude are not catastrophic for the tourism industry, or for aviation, but they are a serious issue," he said.
"I would expect that they wouldn't be as high as these amounts – they might be in the order of 5 per cent, 10 per cent over the next few years."
The tourism expert said the increases would affect inbound tourism more than outbound.
He said the price rise would take place over a number of years, rather than overnight as fuel price rises did, and there could be balancing factors such as a lower exchange rate that would help inbound tourism.
There was also a question of whether the revenues raised through a carbon trading scheme should be used to help the tourism industry adapt to the new regime.
"The tourism industry is facing quite substantial adaptation costs and loss of markets," Professor Forsyth said.
"Tourists will be paying more for their airfares and also for their ground transport. So there is a question of who should pay for those costs of adaptation.
"Is there a case for some of those revenues that are being raised from tourism or from aviation to be used for adaptation in the tourist industry?"
He also warned that the focus of international tourism could change quickly and that airlines could have difficulty in passing on the full cost of an ETS.
The research centre has estimated domestic aviation in 2003-2004 produced 5.9 million tonnes CO2. A first estimate of the CO2 produced by the Australian component of international air travel puts it at 3.7 million tonnes, although Professor Forsyth said this was likely to rise when estimates were revised.
This put the total carbon footprint for tourism at 26 million tonnes plus another 19 million tonnes for indirect inputs. A New Zealand visitor would contribute about 0.6 tonnes, a visitor from Hong Kong 1.7 tonnes and a British visitor 3.8 tonnes.
by Steve Creedy | Source | News.com.au
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