Checking In with Professor James Higham

High carbon lifestyles are a driver of climate change and tourism is a prominent feature of high carbon lifestyles. Carbon offsetting emerged as a possible solution almost 20 years ago. Airlines began to offer offsetting as an option for travellers to resolve their personal air travel emissions, but it never really took off. Despite becoming central to many airlines' environmental commitments, very few passengers ever opted to offset their emissions. So what is carbon offsetting? What are its merits and where has it got us?

You may have seen that Wizz Air recently ran a promotion for the sale of 10,000 ‘all you can fly’ packages. This triggered a lot of debate online particularly among members of the public who are concerned about climate change and recognise the need to reduce rather than unnecessarily increase demand for air travel. This raises interesting questions about how accepting people are of the idea of unlimited flying, and how receptive people are to changing their own personal travel behaviours.

In the fourth episode of Checking In, I consider regenerative tourism. Lots has been spoken and written about the so-called tourism reset after COVID19 and the emergence of the concept of regenerative tourism. But what is regenerative tourism and what makes it any different from the tourism that we have now? Is it little more than fanciful thinking or does it have real potential to allow us to rethink the relationship between tourism, people and place?

In Episode 3 of Checking In, I talk about the significant increase in the International Visitor and Conservation Levy that the New Zealand coalition government has recently announced. This has generated a lot of angry reaction from industry, particularly Tourism Industry Aotearoa, who think it will be bad for business. But it is worth looking at a bit more closely so that we can move beyond political positions on tourism growth and look at the facts dispassionately.

In this second episode of Checking In, I reflect on Air New Zealand’s recent abandonment of its science-based targets. This has been an embarrassing and uncomfortable announcement for the country’s flagship carrier to make, after putting a lot of emphasis on the importance of climate leadership and action in recent years. So in this episode, I comment on the background to Air New Zealand’s previous commitments and consider how the airline might navigate its climate impacts into the future.

In this first episode of Checking In, I reflect on recent examples of overtourism around the world. In particular, the news over the last few days that the mayor of Santorini has asked residents to "stay indoors" whilst the town is overwhelmed by visitors coming off multiple cruise ships to get their iconic Instagram sunset shots. But it's not just Santorini suffering from this phenomenon. I consider what this means for tourism destinations elsewhere in the world.