One of the country’s leading renewable energy and carbon specialists, Professor Alan Brent, Associate Director at the Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies at Stellenbosch University, believes that unless the industry takes responsibility for emissions associated with travel to and within South Africa, the country will lose market share to destinations that do.
Says Professor Brent: “It is pretty-well understood that carbon emissions due to flying and driving, among other things, have an effect on our climate. In fact, many tourism product owners and operators, and particularly airlines, coach and car-hire companies market their ‘carbon-neutrality statuses’ by providing their customers with an option of making a ‘carbon payment’ to offset their carbon emissions during the course of their travels.”
However, there is a grey area surrounding carbon offset programmes, he says. “One of the ways that companies are doing this is to either offer clients an option to contribute to an offset initiative or to the companies themselves making a donation on behalf of the customer to certified carbon offset programmes. Examples of this kind of offset often include renewable energy schemes in countries that generate energy from carbon-free sources, where they would otherwise have used conventional energy systems. But many of the ‘offshore’ schemes have earned themselves a bad reputation, and the concept of carbon offsetting with initiatives outside of the country affected by the emissions has itself been widely criticised for being an easy way out, basically using money to buy a clean conscience, and has thus become synonymous with greenwashing.”
Professor Brent will be discussing this and other energy-related issues during the upcoming Environmental Management in Tourism (EMiT) conference which takes place at the Sandton Sun Conference Centre from November 9-10.
The conference aims to tackle the environmental impacts of global warming facing the tourism, travel and leisure industry and will offer input from local and international specialists on a wide range of subjects, including water, waste, communications, green meetings and events, corporate responsibility, CSI and the profile of the green traveller.
For more information or to register visit www.emitconference.com