Initiative: Climate Change and Youth Travel

WYSE Travel Confederation members have the power to educate millions of young travellers, to help them to make responsible choices while travelling, and to decrease the impact of their travels on climate change. This population is our future: developing responsible travel habits today will help them foster greater environmental and social responsibility tomorrow.

Facts on Climate Change

Consensus exists that humans influence the global climate, and human activities contribute to global warming. Humans add 26 billion metric tonnes of the principal greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere per year (approximately four metric tonnes per person). GHG emissions have risen 70 percent between 1970 and 2004. Global CO2 emissions from aviation are small compared to other industries. However, although aviation is responsible for only 2 to 2.5 percent of total CO2 emissions, these emissions are predicted to rise annually. The scientific community has identified the transport industry (and particularly the aviation sector) as part of the climate change problem. Individuals and organisations can make a difference by mitigating their emissions, making their practices more sustainable, and reducing the impact of their actions on our global climate and environment.

Future Implications

There is agreement from the public, the press, and from world governments that we have a responsibility to act, and the consensus is that the time to act is now. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) assessment reports point to potentially stricter governmental regulations on the travel industry in the future. A proactive industry approach today could lessen the severity of regulations in the future. Specific potential regulatory action includes establishing a cost for carbon emissions (a “carbon price”) through: a carbon tax, compulsory trading schemes, or regulation. Economist Sir Nicolas Stern’s 2006 report to the British government claimed climate change could have huge potential economic and social consequences in the future, likening the impacts to those experienced after the great wars and economic depression in the first half of the 20th century. Stern reported a possible 20 percent decrease in the potential global GDP if we fail to act now, and reported an investment of 1 percent of the global GDP per year is required to avoid the worst future effects of climate change.