Submission to “Tourism for a Better Future”
We challenge the Regenerative Tourism Plan to acknowledge the existential threat of climate change and confront the region’s “dependence on the visitor economy” that’s enabled by international flights.
Failing to acknowledge the international flight emissions on which the region’s tourism depends, we argue, undermines the authenticity of this draft plan that claims to be Regenerative. Efforts to reduce carbon emissions from local tourism activities are a sham if done to increase visitor demand, with the resulting massive increase in global flight emissions.
This submission references FlightPlan2050’s research that identified the flights of international visitors to the Queenstown Lakes in 2018 caused 8.3 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to more than 10% of New Zealand’s total.