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010
UNIT 1: WHERE DO WE STAND? THE STATE OF THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
Numbers of motor vehicles
millions
700
6.4
If current rates
of expansion
continue, there
will be more than
1,000 million
vehicles on the
road by 2025
600
500
400
300
2.3
184.7
5.5
208.6
32.3
223.2
44.2
256.5
West Asia
North America
Latin America
and the
Caribbean
Europe and
Central Asia
200
17.4
191.0
Asia and the
Pacific
100
0
129.1
52.3
93.2
5.3
11.1
1980 1990 1996
127.3
18.6
Africa
Source: compiled by UNEP GRID Geneva from International Road Federation/
Published in Global Environment Outlook 2000, UNEP
The areas that
are most at risk
from climate
change – small
islands, coastal
zones, flatlands
and wetlands –
are primary
tourist
attractions.
2
Data Source: Worldwide Fund
for Nature (WWF)
The tourism and hospitality industries are important motivators of travel and
transport and significant users of energy. Both transport and energy directly
involve the burning of fossil fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases. Tourism
is therefore an indirect, but significant, contributor to global warming and climate
change.
The areas that are most at risk from climate change – small islands, coastal
zones, flatlands and wetlands – are primary tourist attractions. The industry would
suffer heavy losses if these areas were destroyed. A shift in climate zones and
subsequent changes to flora and fauna could mean that many countries would
lose their key tourist sites. Increased floods and storms would destroy basic
infrastructure, and the resulting epidemics will reduce tourist arrivals to such
areas. Consider the following examples 2 .
• More frequent periods of extreme heat are causing discomfort in many
eastern Mediterranean resorts, where the number of days above 40°C
has increased;
• A decline in cloud cover in Australia will increase exposure to the sun’s
harmful rays;
• Malaria is likely to re-emerge in Spain;
• Cruise ships no longer visit islands where dengue fever is present; this
is threatening the Caribbean’s 12-billion-dollar, half-million-employee
tourism industry;
• Skiing destinations, which are recording less snowfall and shorter
skiing seasons;
• Hurricane George brought losses of US$ 2 million to the Caribbean
tourism in 1998, and arrivals to Peru, Equador and Bolivia fell by 45%
following flood damage from Hurricane Mitch the same year;
• The 1991 cholera epidemic cost Peru over one billion dollars in lost
seafood exports and tourism;
• Coral bleaching, fading of the reef’s rich colours, has until now been
triggered by the rise of local seawater temperature over a critical
threshold. Since 1997, there have been six excessively warm periods,
which caused mass coral bleaching the world over. The most damage
was caused in 1998, the hottest year of the century;
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