👋Welcome to Anticlimatic - an experience where you say ‘Bye!’ to jargons & doom and ‘Hi!’ to analogies & memes to understand climate change better.
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Explain like I’m a memer
(summary in a meme)
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
JRR Tolkien’s famous quote from The Lord of the Rings is the chant of tourists across the world. And that’s probably given birth to every globetrotter’s moniker - Wanderlust.
Be it for genuinely exploring new places or vanity check for Instagram, a massively growing population is traveling the world. In just the first three months of 2023, ~235 million tourists traveled internationally which is twice the number in the same period of 2022! While some of it is attributable to revenge travel post COVID, most of it is simple recovery of pre-pandemic tourism.
UN World Tourism Organization tells us that within Q1 of 2023, international travel touched 80% of pre-COVID times. My Instagram’s ‘suggested for you’ content is both a testament and a promise to this super-charged recovery 😂. However, there's an incoming plot twist. ‘Offseason’ is nearing extinction in the travel dictionary. Changing climatic conditions (think heat waves in Europe), large crowds and high prices during traditional peak seasons (think Dubai) are redistributing visitor inflow across seasons around the world. Did that immediately sound promising for countries from an economic POV? Yes. But do we know the corresponding costs? Probably not. Beyond the flights/hotels/visa expenses, there are massive costs hidden in plain sight - social and environmental upheaval.
The roaring tourism problem
What is common among Paris, Goa, Venice and Bali?
They are poster-children (not the only ones) for over-tourism. Over-tourism, in simple words, translates to putting excessive pressure on the existing resources of a destination - land, food, water, air and everything in between. This threatens the peaceful existence of the native population.
Travel is euphoric and liberating but when people seek both without accountability, chaos ensues. Bali in Indonesia is the perfect example. Bali’s picturesque landscapes drew 6.3 million tourists in 2019 alone and this year until April, it had already drawn 1.4 million. Canggu has turned from a quiet surf town to a land of gridlocks. To cater to too many people, Bali has turned into a massive construction site for hotels and cafes with bad traffic and big dumps of waste. That’s more pollution (of air, water and noise) and less resources for natives. Spirited tourists vandalize property and disrespect local culture (like parading naked in Balinese temples1) to the extent that the local government has had to issue behavioural guidelines for tourists this year.
Similarly, Venice in Italy has long been a poster child for the ills of tourism. As a popular stopover for many cruise tours, 73% of its tourist population descends from massive ships while contributing only 18% to the economy2. Now the problem is that when these ships - floating towns with 4-5k people - frequently cross and dock at the Giudecca canal (closest to touristy Venice), they move large quantities of water and sediments which over time adversely affects the foundations of built structures and in the process also disturbs marine life3. Venice has anyway been at a risk of sinking just like Jakarta. This is so serious that in 2021 UNESCO said that Venice, a world heritage site since 1987, may be put on endangered list if the cruise ships were not permanently banned. The Italian government did issue the ban in 2021 but its enforcement has been weak.
The Instagram effect has made matters worse by pumping social proof into destinations that are ‘picture worthy’. Pictures are the tasting menu from which people choose their travel destinations. So many people in my know have visited Barcelona and Bali this year and posted pictures from exactly the same spots that by now I believe that I visited those places myself! Thanks to ‘travel influencers’, you can now contact me for predictions on cities preparing to be tourist-ruined by 2028.
Earlier this year, I watched a documentary called The Last Tourist. Ironic that I watched it while on my way to a vacation but it exposed me to some cruel truths of the travel industry, especially in the developing nations:
A minimal percentage of the money you spend as a tourist stays in the country of tourism while most of it leaks out. In Kenya, only 14% of the dollars spent by tourists stay in the country, the rest is taken out by international hotels.
While tourism is applauded for helping create jobs for the local population, nobody questions the quality of those jobs. Locals are not integrated well in the tourism value chain - they are paid low wages by hotels, their living conditions are poor (which you will never see in the expanse of your luxury resort) and superior resources get diverted to tourists.
Saviour complex among folks from developed nations has led to “volunteer tourism” in developing nations where, for instance, volunteers spend time with children in orphanages. This has become problematic on two levels:
It’s become like visiting a zoo - volunteers spending short bursts of ‘cuddling, happy times’ with kids longing for belongingness. As soon as the children develop attachment to a volunteer, it’s time for the volunteer to leave. This makes it difficult for children to build healthy relationships and also induces depression. [By the way, zoos / animals in captivity are also a pathetic concept]
Because ‘orphanage tourism’ has become a thing, businesses have proliferated around the concept leading to an increase in orphanages. Cambodia witnessed a 75% increase. You no longer know who’s the artist - the orphan or the volunteer!
Pretty much a holiday from the reality of places.
Vacations are also a self awarded license for overconsumption. As tourists, we become unconscious consumers, letting ourselves loose because “we are on holiday”. Be it food, alcohol or shopping, the more we consume, the more trash we generate. Most of the elusive travel destinations don’t have robust waste management systems which only means one thing - your refuse either reaches the ocean or the landfill or gets burned!
Lastly, the most commonly highlighted environmental peril of tourism is the massive carbon footprint of air travel. I won’t put too much light on it for you already know about it but here’s a chart to revise those numbers, in case you forgot.
What you read above are just a few of the many multi-layered problems associated with excessive travel. So, what?
A verse from Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero has been playing in my head since the time I started writing this piece:
It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me
And that’s where a large part of the solution lies. Us.
The sustainable tourism solution
If lust has responsibility attached, why must wanderlust be left scot free?
Traveling at will is a privilege and with privilege comes responsibility. Step 1 of making tourism sustainable is internalizing this idea. It is easy to pass the buck onto tour operators and other players in the ecosystem but as a consumer, until we don’t demand better, they have no incentive to operate better. Here’s a few things in your control to make traveling the world a sustainable practice:
Responsible traveling = informed traveling
If you’ve read this post in its entirety, you’ve aced 50% of this one. For the remaining 50%, invest time researching the reality of your destination. You will not find everything on the internet but the idea is to educate yourself as much as you can to be able to make an informed decision. This doesn’t mean you have to skip places with grim realities but you will have to take extra care ensuring that you don’t leave that place worse off for the natives.
Minimize your trash footprint
When you travel, carry your reusable water bottle to refill water from public refill stations or from your hotel dispensers. All you need to do is ask for it. Carrying reusable cutlery - mug, straw, spoon/fork and spare tiffin box - will come handy when you take food to-go or at places which serve in disposables. If you’re thinking of the apparent impracticality of my suggestion, checkout collapsible silicone cutlery which you may not know existed. It’s travel friendly. Pack some reusable bags along to replace plastic / paper bags which come with every purchase. Some trash will be inevitable, don’t litter, dispose of it the right way. If you can turn your pro-mode on, bring your recyclable trash back with you and send it for recycling (relevant for destinations which you know lack waste management).
Consume responsibly; eat / buy local
Be conscious of what you’re consuming. Some high end places will serve you imported foods as delicacies but what’s the point of traveling to a place if you didn’t explore its local flavours? Ditching imported foods for local produce may help reduce your personal carbon footprint.
Use public transport and chose slow travel (trains over planes)
Sure shot way of reducing your carbon emissions
Seek options which champion sustainable tourism
When booking your travel, look for accommodations and activities which actively champion the cause on both the social and environment front. They will generally go by the moniker of eco-tourism, however, do smell for greenwashing by questioning claims. Likelihood of learning about the local cultures is higher in such settings as they prioritize embedding locals in the value chain well.
Don’t do anything you won’t do at your own home
There might be certain things that you do at home which may not be taken well in a different culture. Be wary of those and always respect the locals. Just basic manners.
Happy responsible vacations this holiday season!
Edit: Three days after posting this piece, I came across this hilarious Instagram page which makes memes on the ‘influencers of Bali’ - smartly highlighting the excesses of the phenomena.
Additional reads:
15 destinations Instagram has helped ruin
France pledges to tackle 'overtourism'
Principles for Sustainable Destinations - World Economic Forum white paper 2022
The visual was quite jarring when I witnessed it standing inside St. Mark’s Square, the place right next to which the ships dock in Venice