Friday, February 8, 2019

Estimating Tourism Carbon Footprints in PNG with cases from New Zealand

By MICHAEL KUMAKA | COMMENTARY

A study commissioned by the UNWTO shows that CO2 emissions from global tourism transport are in the order of 981 Mt CO2, and more than half (52%) of these are estimated to be caused by air travel.

Much of this air travel is international in nature.

Sectors other than aviation have been more successful in reducing emissions, and if aviation fails to address its greenhouse gas emissions it will put an additional burden on other economic sectors to meet national or international targets.

At present, greenhouse gas emissions associated with international air travel are not formally part of a country’s emissions inventory (or more specifically they are measured through the sales of bunker fuels at the airport but do not form part of national reduction targets), and it is the International Civil Aviation Organization that is charged under the Kyoto Protocol to develop mechanisms for dealing with aviation’s emissions.

The average international tourist travelling to New Zealand flies for about 13,000 km one-way and the emissions associated with this amount to about 1.6 tCO2 per person.

The total amount of CO2 emissions associated with international tourists’ travel to New Zealand (one-way) had been calculated for 1999 at 1.9 million tonnes. This referred to 1.59 million arrivals and when extrapolated to the 2.47 million international tourists in 2007, the emissions would be in the order of 2.1 million tonnes of CO2.

The footprint of international tourists’ air travel to New Zealand is therefore of a similar order to the in-country footprint of 2.56 million tonnes of CO2 – not accounting for non-carbon greenhouse gases and not considering tourists’ return flights.

It is important, however, to understand that the carbon footprint measured within a country is potentially only a small proportion of the total.

New Zealand’s total CO2-e emissions in tonnes by domestic tourism carbon footprint is 1,918,937 and while international tourism carbon footprint is 637,820 ton C02-e emissions. Carbon emissions per tourist per trip is 45.7kg CO2-e domestically and 258.2kg CO2-e internationally. On a daily basis, however, domestically 27.5kg CO2-e emissions and internationally 13.0kg CO2-e emissions.

From these figures, by comparison, a single trip of an international tourist visiting New Zealand emits four times more CO2-e than a domestic tourist’s trip.

Given this scenario for New Zealand, Papua New Guinea would record the same trend in domestic and international tourism carbon footprints.

Looking at a tourist’s emission per trip to New Zealand is at 258.2kg CO2-e, and for a return trip to the UK from Australia would cost $425 for carbon emissions, on average it is anticipated that an international tourist, either for business or holiday or visiting friends/relatives pays a $75 per trip for carbon footprints in Papua New Guinea.

PNG is amongst the 164 countries in the world that have submitted their national plans to combat Climate Change since the Paris Agreement was adopted in December of 2015.

PNG’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are mostly from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF). PNG’s CO2 emission from LULUCF in 2007 was 146.5 – 268.6 million tCO2.

PNG, along with other rainforest nation countries pushed for a mechanism that will address reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and compensating those countries that have forest cover.

It was eventually adopted as a mechanism under the UNFCCC framework as REDD+.

The PNG Government established the CCDA to coordinate all climates change-related polices. The Government also created National Climate Change Committee to take full responsibility for all policies and actions concerning climate. The Committee meets monthly to ensure that climate change is addressed by the PNG Government. - Via Garamut News.




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