Global warming gives rise to climate tourism

25 September 2007

The ecological phenomenon of global warming has spawned a new breed of travel in the booming eco-tourism business, climate tourism.

The so-called climate tourists seek out places where a long-term warming trend – which is the subject of a global summit hosted by the United Nations in the fourth week of September 2007 – is starting to have a perceptible impact.

According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, however, there are many who see a huge irony in this kind of travel since any trip by train, plane, or cruise ship pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and potentially contributes to the warming of the planet.

Jeff Gazzard, of Aviation Environmental Federation, a United Kingdom-based group fighting to curtail airplane emissions, asks, “What is the point of your trip to the Maldives if the end result is that it will be drowned because emissions from eco-tourists’ jets contribute to global warming and rising seas.”

The Maldives, a string of islands in the Indian Ocean, are located about three feet above sea level and are at risk getting drowned if the effects of warming raise ocean levels.

Over 1.5 million tourists now visit the Arctic each year – up from 1 million in the early 1990s, according to the United Nations.

Longer and warmer summers keep the Arctic seas free of ice flows for more duration than earlier, so cruise ships can visit places that were once inaccessible, thereby raising other environmental concerns.

Some tourists to Svalbard archipelago in Norway in the Arctic hope to see new islands that have appeared as the ice sheet retreats.

According to the article in The Wall Street Journal, the number of visitors annually to Svalbard has gone up by 33% in the past five years to about 80,000. About half of them arrive on cruise liners.

With so many more passengers going ashore, fragile vegetation on some islands has worn down. There is also a higher risk of an oil spill. A new law requires ships on the eastern part of the islands to use marine diesel instead of heavy oil.

Local wildlife in Svalbard too is under threat –not only from direct climate change but also from humans who visit the place. There are regions in Svalbard where even polar bears could not access easily, but boats can now get there because the sea ice melts. This might lead to more conflicts between humans and bears.

The question of global warming itself is leading to travel. Earthwatch Institute, a non-profit organization based in Maynard, Massachusetts, the United States, runs trips that allow people to help scientists studying coral reefs in the Bahamas and the effects of climate change on orchids in India.

Earthwatch Institute’s 11-day trip – titled Climate Change at the Arctic’s Edge – involves going to Manitoba, Canada, to monitor carbon stores in the permafrost.