Air Travel, Alleviator Of Poverty

To conclude this series of post I have been doing about peoples perceptions about climate change and aviation, I am going to look at a recent article concerning tourism and its effect on the environment (Peeters and Eijgelaar, 2014). It zooms out of what people are thinking and looks to possible future scenarios and current gaps in research. 

The article questions where to strike the balance between tourism in developing countries  as a tool for development and efforts to reduce and mitigate aviation related climate change. Looking at tourism in developing countries, long haul air travel to such places is involved and these emissions contribute a large proportion to the emissions of tourism. 

The article states that despite the number of guest nights and trips not increasing, there has been an increase of tourism related emissions. This reflects the increasing distances that people travel to go on holiday (to more tropical and developing countries). This has also been confirmed in de Brujin et al. (2012). The paper also backs up what I wrote about in the last post about how technological change alone is not sufficient in being able to reduce aviation related emissions (to below 2005 levels). 

With this in mind, difficulty arises in the possibility of setting limits or increasing costs for long haul travel when having these air travel options available is currently benefiting many developing countries. Curbing the growth of aviation encounters strong opposition from tourism and transport sectors on the grounds of the 'poverty ethics argument' (Peeters and Eijgelaar, 2014). This is as a result of acknowledging air transport in efforts by developing countries to develop sustainably through tourism, impeding upon this is seen as taking a step back. 

Rather than the people themselves justifying why they continue to travel by air despite knowing the impacts it has on the environment as I have looked at in the past couple of posts. Insights from this paper see how people who are benefiting from (long haul) air travel yet who may not have access to it themselves are having their views represented on behalf on them. The UN for instance in its past conferences on climate change have made the case for aviation growth relating to poverty alleviation (Peeters and Eijgelaar, 2014). 

Thus in light of the scientific effects air travel has on the environment and continuous calls for it to be made greener and more efficient and regulated, policy makers it seems (as well as people themselves) continue to see the benefits of air travel. When considering how much it contributes to development as this post has explored, it makes the debate on where and to what extend to curb and restrict aviation that much more difficult considering that as well as responsibilities to the environment and nature, we also must take care of each other, and aviation has made many things possible that were not within just a couple of generations! I'm sure those living near an airport fight path would disagree! 

Wonder if the noise bothers them? (Source: Live Mint)