Travel is fun and often necessary, but it has a significant negative impact on the planet. Tourism contributes to more than 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, 90% of which is due to transport TheWorldCounts, a Danish site that tracks data on the state of the planet.
Tourists deplete the local natural resources of the places they visit and contribute to pollution, wastage and damage to land areas, ultimately destroying the resources on which tourism depends.
Sustainable travel or ecotourism is a more environmentally friendly alternative. Sustainable travel is a rapidly growing industry with potential environmental and economic benefits to travel destinations. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, sustainable travel can protect natural and cultural heritage, conserve biodiversity, create sustainable livelihoods and improve human wellbeing.
Travel and tourism companies team up to declare a climate emergency. Tourism can be responsibly planned and managed, and the sustainable travel sector is growing rapidly, according to the UNWTO. The UNWTO advocates the application of its code of ethics for its 156 member countries in order to maximize the socio-economic contribution of tourism while minimizing the negative effects.
Euromonitor International, a market research company, has developed a Sustainable Travel Index to help travel destinations and tour operators move to more sustainable and purpose-driven tourism models.
They analyzed 99 countries in seven key pillars that make up sustainable tourism. These are:
- Environmental sustainability
- Social sustainability
- Economic sustainability
- risk
- Sustainable demand
- Sustainable transport
- Sustainable accommodation
Scandinavian countries lead the way: 65% of tour operators have already implemented a sustainability strategy, according to the Euromonitor report, and the top 20 countries are in Europe.
The US ranks 35th and sixth in the Economic Stability category, which addresses a country’s over-reliance on tourism. The US is fifth for sustainable demand. The level of resilience, value creation and extent of overtourism determine how sustainable a country’s tourism demand is for this index.
The countries that ranked at the bottom were Pakistan, India, Mauritius, Vietnam, and Morocco.
Based on the Euromonitor International report, these are the 30 best countries for sustainable travel.
1. Sweden
The birthplace of the flight-shameful movement and home of climate protection activist Greta Thunberg (center), Sweden, is heavily involved in sustainable development goals to preserve the Arctic ice and permafrost to stop climate change and aims to achieve a net zero by 2045 -Emission to achieve, says Euromonitor.
