Tourism | Bhutan puts ecology before the economy

Putting ecology before the economy, Bhutan is going to charge regional travellers from India, Bangladesh, and the Maldives, a Sustainable Development Fee (SDF) of $16.85 (Rs 1,200) per day from July. Predictably, tourism operators on both sides of the border, that were riding high on the recent tourism boom, have expressed serious concerns about this move.

Bhutan adheres strictly to its policy of ‘high value-low impact’ tourism based on its unique Gross National Happiness (GNH) policy that is based on four principles of sustainable development, environmental conservation, preservation and promotion of cultural values, and good governance.

To achieve these goals, barring regional tourists, visitors from all other countries pay significantly higher costs, including a Sustainable Development Fee of $65 (Rs 4,650) as part of a mandatory package of minimum $250 per day which includes, visa fees, sightseeing entrance fees, meals, local transport, and accommodation. The SDF is a direct revenue contribution for the maintenance of ecology and local development in the country that is also famous for being carbon negative.

However, this "high value, low impact" strategy was failing in the last few years following a spike in the numbers of regional visitors, especially from India, that were exempt from SDF levy. Bhutan received a total of 274,097 visitors in 2018. Of the total arrivals, 202,290 were regional tourists. Indians make up the majority of these regional tourists and had sparked worries for the unique Himalayan kingdom's star attraction, its cherished ecology.

Bhutan’s biggest attraction is its natural heritage and it is a fact that tourists in large numbers, running around some of the world’s most pristine landscapes, are going to damage the ecology, resulting in a loss of flora and fauna and posing a biosecurity risk. Go to any hill station in India, from Manali to Munnar, to witness the devastation caused by Indian tourists.

In its Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report in 2017, the World Economic Forum noted that degradation of the natural environment was having a serious effect on the tourism sector: natural capital depletes — because of overfishing, deforestation or water and air pollution — so tourism revenues decline.

UN Environment’s research has shown that the industry’s use of key resources, such as energy and water, is growing commensurately with its generation of solid waste, including marine plastic pollution, sewage, loss of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions.

Tourism accounts for around 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, to quantify the industry’s total carbon footprint. The report concludes that flying less and investing in payment schemes to offset the damage caused by travel will be essential to avoid “unchecked future growth in tourism-related emissions”.

It’s quite simple, a country that has a tourism sector that both cares about the sustainability of the environment and nurtures its places of natural beauty is going to attract discerning international and local visitors who are willing to pay the extra dollar. That extra dollar can go into restoration, conservation and well-being of the local biodiversity.

For example, Rwanda’s strategy to focus on high-value/low impact responsible ecotourism, aka Gorilla Tourism, rather than mass tourism has resulted in funding for the government’s programme for the protection of gorillas. Since 2010, Rwanda is considered to be one of the safest destinations in East Africa for wildlife and biodiversity experiences.

Several studies, including one by the Nielsen and Cornell University’s Centre for Hospitality Research, have estimated that 75 percent of Millennial and Gen Z travellers would be willing to pay extra for sustainable tourism. Fifty percent of the older generation or Baby Boomers are also willing to pay more for environmentally responsible destinations.

Cox & Kings carried out a survey in India’s key cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Thiruvananthapuram. About 5,000 respondents aged between 20 and 35 took part in the survey, and a whopping 87 percent of the respondents felt strongly about saving the environment.

These are encouraging trends, and may just augur well for the tourism sector.
We need carbon neutral, zero-waste, environmentally-sensitive tour packages to destinations that have environmentally-conscious, free and fair societies that value the ecosystem.

Shailendra Yashwant is a senior advisor to Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA). Views are personal.

First published in Moneycontrol

Budget 2020 | On climate change, it was business as usual

Presenting the Union Budget 2020-2021, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that India’s commitment towards tackling climate change made at Paris conference will kick start from January 1, 2021.
She also referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two international initiatives in the climate change arena; namely, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) and the International Solar Alliance (ISA), which according to her will also help achieve India’s commitment to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, enhance adaptation and achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The efforts to this end, she said, will be executed in various sectors through normal budgeting process.
Rs 4,400 crore has been allocated to give incentives to large cities (more than one million population) to formulate plans for ensuring ‘cleaner air’. The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC) will notify the parameters for such incentives.
Sitharaman also announced that old thermal power plants that do not meet prescribed emission norms will be asked to close down and their land will be used for unspecified alternative purposes. She also said PM-KUSUM scheme will be expanded to help 2 million farmers in setting up standalone solar pumps. A slew of other announcements for uptake of renewable energy and organic agriculture were also referred to in her speech.
The only thing remarkable of today’s budget speech was that, ‘climate change’ found space in her over 2 hour 40 minutes long budget speech after four subsequent budget speeches (2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19) under the same government had ignored it. The last time we heard climate change referred to in a full budget speech was in first budget presented by Arun Jaitley in 2014-15.
However, today’s announcements are nothing but a lip service to climate change and the proposed incremental measures fall short in their intent to transform India into a sustainable, low-carbon, high-growth economy is disappointing.
As Nicholas Stern famously said, “Climate change is the biggest market failure the world has ever seen”, Budget 2020 with its deafening silence on budget allocations to the National Action Plan on Climate change (NAPCC) and the National Adaptation Fund, does not augur well for India’s campaign to combat climate change.
Instead of a strategy that will re-orient how we execute climate action via an economy-wide green industrialisation that puts money into low-carbon and climate-resilient sectors such as renewables, public transport, ecological restoration, what we got was yet another set of vague and unclear announcements.
“She did not recognise climate change as a major threat to people and economy, ignoring the estimates that climate change impacts could cause a reduction of 2.5 to 4.5 per cent of GDP, and did not give any indication of revising its emission reduction targets. The message to the states on old and polluting coal fired power plants is weak and advisory in nature,” said Harjeet Singh, global climate change head of Action Aid International.
“…the finance minister had no clear allocation or incentives in today’s speech on how India intends to develop resilient infrastructure, retrofit existing infrastructure for resilience, and to enable a measurable reduction in infrastructure losses, ” said Sanjay Vashist, Director of Climate Action Network South Asia.
While forest cover has been increasing in India as claimed by the MOEFCC in its recent report that will put India on track to achieve Paris Accord target of creating an additional carbon sink by increasing forest cover, the Finance Minister was silent on any further investments required for research into restoring biodiversity, conserving landscapes and preserving the natural balance of biodiversity in various parts of India.
Considering that she referred to climate change as part of the three themes woven around ‘aspirational India, economic development and caring society’, there were high expectations that the Finance Minister will go the extra mile to mainstream climate change in the design of the first budget of the decade — but it was business as usual with no real incentives to mitigate or adapt to climate crisis.
Shailendra Yashwant is senior adviser, Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA). Twitter: @shaibaba. Views are personal.

First published in Moneycontrol