Sustainable Tourism

1.0 Executive summary

With the focus of sustainable tourism, this report will look into the carbon offset activities of Changi Airport Group (CAG). Being the most awarded airport in the world and 46.5 million of passenger movement in the year of 2011, CAG may face environment sustainability issues. In view of triple bottom-line of economic, socio-cultural and environment, a field study was made to Changi Airport to evaluate its sustainability with the ST indicators. Detailed analysis were done on the ST indicators and results shown that CAG could be improved in terms of environmental friendly on their carbon offset activities. Hence, recommendations were introduced such as visitor impact management, environmental impact management and limits of acceptable change.

2.0 Introduction

This report aims to focus on the discussion of the relationship between the Changi Airport Group and the sustainability of the tourism activities. A field trip was made to Changi Airport and the findings will serve as the basis for this report. A set of indicators were identified during the field trip in conjunction to triple bottom-line with economic, socio-cultural and environmental factors. Facts of Changi Airport are provided in Appendix I.

3.0 Objectives of report

The objective of this report is to further discuss on the evaluation of the usefulness of indicators on the measurement of ST activities, followed by detailed analysis and recommendations based on Changi Airport.

4.0 Literature review

This section will look into the discussion of issues pertaining to carbon neutrality, carbon offsets, carbon footprints, evolution of sustainable tourism and sustainable tourism indicators with an in-depth research of literature reviews.

4.1 Sustainable Tourism

(Hunter C. , 1997) defines sustainable tourism (ST) as a need to maintain the environment and society for the future generation in order to remain viable. It looks into the context of the triple bottom-line of economically beneficial, environmental-friendly and social-cultural sustainability. With the world evolving, (Kuo & Chen, 2009)states that there is a need to identify and discuss the impact of environmental issues tourism would have on the destination.

Being the Best Airport in the World for 23 consecutive years, Changi Airport had became a popular spot with more than 70 million passengers annually. Tourism activities were viewed as one of the major economic generation sources for the country but this is often debate by the inequality impact on the environmental changes and often referred as the main contributor for emission of greenhouse gases and uses of fossil fuel (Becken & Patterson, 2006). Moreover, the country may suffer negative impacts on environmental and social-cultural issues if sustainability is not practiced well.

4.2 Sustainable Tourism Indicators

(Weaver, 2006) states that indicators are used to measure the continuous change of the tourism activities. Indicators provide a detailed analytical evaluation of the destination in terms of tourism and assist the stakeholders to make important decisions regarding sustainable development (Schianetz, 2007). In ST, it would be essential to use indicators to facilitate the understanding of general environment and social issues to create economic, environmental and society equality.

According to Agenda 21, (Ramos & Caeiro, 2010) mentioned that sustainable development indicators (SDI) is the process of collecting and using the information to make a wise decision on the development.

Some of the common indicators that are developed by WTO in the early days are waste management, site protection and energy efficiency. Such tools are critical for the organisation to make strategy plans.

However, the indicators may be challenged as the indicators need to be relevance, understandable, measurable and dependable (Hart, 1999). The indicators need to be relevant to achieve the goals, to be understandable in order to allow the local to have a better view, data should be collated easily and accessible, and information should be accurate in order to dependable. Hence, it is important for the indicators to be specific to the destination and related in order to measure.

For Changi Airport Group, achieving balance is a big challenge as it has a contradicting role of focusing on making profits and at the same time taking sides on conservation and continuous carbon neutral activities. Hence, in order for Changi Airport Group to remain its sustainability in the tourism industry, this report will go in-depth on the evaluation of the measurement of SDI.

4.3 Carbon footprints, carbon neutrality and carbon offsets

Global Climate Change, Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect are one of the most pressing environmental threats faced in society today. (Powers & Delano, 2009)

Carbon emission is a prevalent issue in the tourism industry (Ljeomah & Aiyeloja, 2009). According to (Kelly & Williams, 2007), it is argued that the travel and tourism sector consumes excessive amount of energy to produce its goods and services. This bulk of energy consumptions primarily emanates from transportation and accommodation (Gossling & Schumacher, 2010). Transport services which comprises of airlines, railway trains and cruises have over the years, been heavily criticized for using tremendous amount of fuel energy to operate businesses.

As it is inevitable that excessive amount of carbon is emitted during the process of industrial expansions, there is a strong emphasis on the need for carbon neutrality to address sustainability of a tourism destination. Carbon neutrality is often referred as the offset of carbon emissions (Sloan, 2006) to the surrounding environment by replacing with products that are bio-degradable and emits low carbon (Murray & Dev, 2008) .

Carbon offsets is a new concept for greenhouse gas reductions (Schmidt, 2009). In order for organizations and businesses to attain environmental sustainability, the best way is to reduce carbon emissions activities (Tarrant, 2008). Carbon footprints are considered as the measure of impacts on human activities which causes damage to the environment, by releasing greenhouse gases (Murray and Dev,2008). A 'Polluter Pays Principle' (PPP) scheme was suggested for the aviation industry to be socially responsible by paying fuel taxes. Some other ways of reducing carbon emissions include participating in activities such as recycling