What does it mean when we talk about sustainable travel?

What is sustainable travel?

We use the word “sustainability” a lot, but can you define it? It’s not easy, is it? The United Nations defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” When we apply that definition to travel, it means a trip that fulfills the travelers’ desire to explore the world, without negatively impacting the environment, economy, and society.

The 3 aspects of sustainability

These three aspects of sustainability are interlinked. Let’s look at them a bit more closely.

1. Environment: As well as our carbon footprints, this considers the impact of our travel on the natural ecosystem, wildlife, food production and consumption.
2. Society: This focuses on the local community and people’s lives.
3. Economy: The contribution of our economic activity to local businesses and the economy of the local community.

Being mindful of transportation choices

Transportation is an inevitable environmental impact of travel. Flying, of course, is the least sustainable approach. A customer on a long-haul economy flight emits 150 g of carbon per kilometer, which means that flying from Paris to Tokyo creates a carbon footprint of more than 4 tons, which is far above the 2.3-ton recommended annual limit per person needed to keep global heating at just 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

But there are other ways to get around. In my own experience of slow travel, my partner and I visited 19 different countries over four months, using train, bus, hitchhiking, and taxis to travel only on land. That was in countries where public transportation was not as developed as Japan’s. If we had have moved on quicker, we could have reached 30 countries, all without needing to fly.

Overtourism a threat in many countries

The activities that you engage in while traveling also have an environmental impact. The global boom in tourism in recent years has seen the emergence of overtourism. A striking example of it has been that of Thailand’s Maya Bay, which was made famous by the Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach. At the peak, 6000 people visited it each day, creating hundreds of millions of Thai Baht in tourism. But local authorities decided to close it to tourists for four years to give the natural environment time to recover from damage such as the disappearance of wildlife and destruction of coral due to mountains of trash and sunscreen washed off from swimmers.

Japan has faced tourism-related issues, too. In 2018, the Arashiyama bamboo grove in Kyoto City was damaged by numerous cases of vandalism in which visitors carved messages into live bamboo trunks.

Tour buses are another cause of environmental problems in Kyoto. Among the 52.75 million visitors to the city in 2018, 7.5% of foreigners and 4.3% of Japanese visitors used tour buses. One travel writer estimates 2,100 tourists being bused into the narrow streets near the famous Kiyomizu Temple each day. If the tour bus starts from Osaka, which is about 40 kilometers from Kyoto, it can emit about 9 tons of carbon footprint. While tour buses bring economic benefits to the city, they also create air pollution and long-term environmental issues that the locals must face.

Choose local food and services whenever you can

Speaking of locals, the services and stores that you choose to use when traveling can greatly affect the local economy and society. Nowadays, you can find fast-food and supermarkets chains anywhere in the world. It may be more convenient and less hassle to frequent such global enterprises because their prices and products are more or less the same anywhere. While purchasing at those places supports those employees, the products are often imported from other countries and it does not necessarily help the local supply chain as a whole.

Family-owned businesses, such as green grocers, small retailers, and bakers often earn less than that minimum wage and work long hours. Before rushing into a fast-food store or a supermarket chain, we should take the time to do a bit of research and choose local stores. In doing so, you are also likely to find something new that will make your trip uniquely yours.

Make your own adventures

Probably the easiest way to organize travel is to book a tour with a travel agency. Of course, to meet customer demand, they are likely to be offering tours to already overcrowded destinations. Some also market their tours as sustainable, or socially responsible, by featuring (ethically questionable) slum tours, or greenwash-y ecotourism.

Considering the high carbon footprint of flight per kilometer, any “ecotourism” package that includes flying needs to be thoroughly questioned. It is a complex issue that requires us to weigh the pros and cons, especially about whether it makes sense to fly long distances for just a few days of ecotourism.

Use online resources and third parties to research the details of tours and how sustainable they actually are. Better yet, try to self-organize your trip so that you have greater flexibility to choose what you will do and greater ability to estimate how much positive and negative impact your choices will have on the local economy, society, and environment in the long term.

As world travel reawakens, set an example

As a passionate environmentalist, a supporter of sustainable rural development, and of course as a traveler, sustainable travel is an important issue that I want to share with others. Here, I have mentioned some of the basic considerations for sustainable travel, as follows:

• Use local trains and buses and avoid planes as much as possible
• Find hidden scenic spots and activities that suit your interests and steer clear of overcrowded tourist destinations
• Live like a local and eat like a local

The COVID-19 pandemic weakened the existing infrastructure of global tourism, but only after problems of overtourism had already highlighted some of its dangers to sustainability. As world travel begins to reawaken, it is likely that the careful and considered actions of each traveler can affect the future blueprint for the sustainability of mainstream travel.