Sustainability key in our tourism future
New Zealand’s tourism sector had proved unsustainable long before Covid-19 took hold and decimated it, prompting the Government, operators and ‘‘ordinary’’ New Zealanders to contemplate how best to rebuild it.
As devastating as it has been, the pandemic has provided us with an opportunity to safeguard our natural national treasures, help us reach our goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and become a world leader in sustainable and regenerative tourism.
Ahead of the election, we’ve created a wish list of things we’d like to see to help make that happen.
We need to change who we sell ourselves to
The twin crises of Covid-19 and climate change provide compelling reasons to reduce our reliance on international travellers, particularly those who take long-haul flights to get here.
‘‘We don’t yet know what impact Covid is going to have on tourism in the long run, but we do know that international flights are one of the fastestgrowing sources of carbon emissions driving climate change,’’ Greenpeace climate campaigner Amanda Larsson says.
‘‘Planning ahead means thinking about how we can increase domestic tourism and attract overseas tourists planning longer stays.’’
Coronavirus has given us a head start in this respect, and Tourism New Zealand is switching its focus from marketing the country to would-be international visitors to Kiwis.
But we need to keep it up when our borders reopen. Encouraging Kiwis to keep backing their backyard by holidaying domestically reduces the number of international flights we take and benefits our economy, keeping some of the $9 billion at home that we used to spend on overseas holidays.
As many tourism operators are reliant on overseas visitors, we will need to keep selling ourselves to some. But, as Otago University tourism professor James Higham noted in an article for The Conversation, our focus should be on our neighbours.
‘‘Fewer long-haul arrivals, more Australian tourists, more domestic tourism and less outbound travel will dramatically reduce tourism carbon emissions,’’ he wrote.
We need a dedicated conservationfocused tourism agency
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton, concluded in a report last December that tourism in New Zealand risks ‘‘killing the golden goose that laid it’’.
Ruining the natural landscapes that tourists come here for and Kiwis pride themselves on is, essentially, self-destructive.
‘‘An inexorable growth in [visitor] numbers risks an irreversible decline in both environmental quality and human experience of it,’’ the report entitled Pristine, popular... imperilled? stated.
Forest & Bird’s Canterbury and West Coast regional advocacy manager Nicky Snoyink has called for a dedicated tourism agency that works closely with regions to ensure the sector safeguards our environment and native species.
If Tourism NZ were to do this, it would need to work with the Department of Conservation, local government, and environmental NGOs and recreation groups, she said.
A key aim, she argued, would be to improve inadequate infrastructure, particularly in sparsely populated regions that receive a lot of visitors.
‘‘Now, when the Government intends to raise many billions to restart Aotearoa’s economy, is the time to ensure tourism gives more to local communities than it takes,’’ she wrote in an opinion piece for the Otago Daily Times.
‘‘Central government support for community infrastructure could strengthen New Zealand’s green image and, in some regions, help restore tourism’s social licence.’’
We need to boost voluntourism
Voluntourism (volunteering while travelling) has been booming worldwide, so it makes sense to harness its popularity to help the local tourism sector in its efforts to become a world leader in sustainable tourism.
With so many travellers wanting to immerse themselves in our natural landscapes and have authentic experiences that connect them with locals, there’s no reason New Zealand shouldn’t get a bigger piece of the voluntourism pie.
‘‘We should be exploring new opportunities for conservation tourism in New Zealand, where people give back to the beautiful places that they visit,’’ Larsson says.
We need to create more tracks to our famous glaciers
Extreme melting of the country’s glaciers in 2018 was at least 10 times more likely to have happened because of human-caused global warming, according to new research.
Glaciologist Lauren Vargo, lead author of the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington study, said she hoped it would convince people, especially New Zealanders, that more needs to be done to protect our environment against climate change.
Popular helicopter tours emit far more carbon than walking tours, ‘‘leading to more glacier melt and making the ice even less accessible’’, she says.
However, the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have retreated so much, it’s no longer possible to get groups in on foot.
Vargo is in favour of building more tracks to the glaciers so visitors can see them without harming them, especially in Aoraki/Mt Cook and Fiordland national parks.
‘‘These parks get so many visitors but there aren’t many accessible tracks at either, leaving many visitors to take scenic flights and cruises, which generate lots of greenhouse gas emissions. Creating more tracks that are reasonably accessible would hopefully encourage some of the increasing number of tourists to spend more time seeing these landscapes on their feet.’’
We need more long-distance trains
If New Zealand is serious about becoming carbon neutral, it makes sense to invest in the lowestcarbon form of long-distance transport: trains.
And yet, as Paul Callister – an adjunct fellow at Victoria University – and co-authors noted in a July opinion piece for Stuff, the Government has pledged more than $1 billion of its Covid-19 economic response package to the highest-carbon form of travel: aircraft.
Pre-pandemic, New Zealand’s tourist trains were dominated by overseas visitors, with many Kiwis saying they could not afford or justify the fares. But when KiwiRail more than halved the price of the TranzAlpine journey in an effort to lure locals after the nationwide lockdown, the winter season quickly sold out, showing the appetite for train travel is there.
This, the success of the flight shame movement, and the ongoing need to boost domestic tourism, all point towards a need for more long-distance trains.
It would be an expensive exercise, but it would create jobs, help protect existing ones in the tourism and hospitality sectors, and make New Zealand somewhere even flight-shunning climate activists would be happy to travel through.