dossier sur le tourisme et le développement durable

2.2. Various levels of impact
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Tourism and the Environment
The impact on the environment by tourist transport depends on the choice of the means of
transport to go to the destination and to get around once on the spot, on the intensity of use
(frequency, duration, distance) and on other parameters such as the concentration of holidays
at certain times of the year. This impact is at several levels, at the level of the tourist resorts
themselves, at the level of the countries and of the regions. The stakes are partly linked: if the
majority of tourists drive to their destination, the destination will have congestion problems.
At the level of the Mediterranean area as a whole, the main problem concerns the rise in air
traffic and the emissions of greenhouse-effect gases that are associated with it. In France tourist
travel by French people and by foreigners corresponds to about 8% of the potential for global
warming (PGW) in France (composite index incorporating the effects of the main greenhouseeffect
gases), with a relative proportion that is clearly increasingly. In Calvià car travel by tourists
represented 73 000 tons of CO2 in 1995, compared to 8 times more, 534 000 tons, for air
transport of tourists from their home to the Balearic Isles.
Whether internal in the countries or international, transport will no doubt be at the centre of a future
debate on tourism and the environment because of its contribution to greenhouse effect. Worldwide the
potential for warming due to air transport could go beyond that of car transport between 2015 and 2030
(Figure 20) because of an increasing amount of air traffic, of higher emissions per unit (Figure 20) and
because of fewer possibilities than in the past to improve the planes’ energy efficiency and of longer
delays in renewing of the fleet of planes.
Figure 20 : Global warming impact of transport modes world-wide, 1990-2030
Source: CST 1999, IPCC 1999, OECD, 1995