Time for tourism to pay for its environmental damage, says commissioner

Thursday, 18 February 2021

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton has released his second report into tourism’s environmental impacts and says it is time the industry started paying its way.

A departure tax for all international flights and cracking down on freedom campers are among recommendations to get tough on the tourism industry’s environmental damage.

The growth in freedom camping also needed to be controlled.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton on Thursday released his second report into tourism’s environmental effects and says it is time to stop the tourism industry’s special treatment.

“Tourists and tourism businesses should pay for the cost of the services they use and the environmental impairment they impose,” Upton says in the report.

Despite international tourist numbers having crashed from nearly 4 million a year to virtually nothing due to Covid-19, Upton says visitors will eventually return – but when they do, it can’t be business as usual, with overcrowded sites and pressure on nature.

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While the auditor-general probes the way tourism aid was handled, not all operators want the money they were offered.

That meant now was the ideal time to take stock of tourism’s impacts and to plan to do things in a way that was less harmful to the environment.

His report makes four recommendations:

Introducing a departure tax to reflect the environmental cost of flights from New Zealand, and use that money for research into low-emissions aviation technology and climate change finance for Pacific nations.
Greater focus on environmental criteria in new tourism developments, and more input from mana whenua and local communities.

The Tongariro Crossing is an example of tourism’s pressure on the environment, with up to 3000 people walking it a day.

Giving the Department of Conservation more power to control activities on conservation land and to protect wildness and natural quiet.
Tightening regulations on vehicles used for freedom camping and ensuring infringement penalties are a serious deterrent for undesirable behaviour.

Upton says many countries have departure taxes and if we implemented it at the same level as Britain, it would add $25 to a flight to Australia and the Pacific, or $155 for an economy long-haul flight to Europe.

The tax would apply to international and New Zealand travellers and, at these levels, could raise $400 million annually.

Upton says the departure tax is the easiest of his recommendations to implement “and the reset isn’t so stupendously costly that it is going to make any difference to people’s travel plans”.

And far from deterring overseas tourists, Upton says it would show the world we are serious about aviation’s impact on climate change and make people more comfortable about travelling here.

“I would be hopeful that what I am proposing could be grasped. I mean, if this really is the issue of our generation, if this really is an emergency, it has got to be for every sector – and this is the gaping hole.”

Upton’s report, Not 100% – but four steps closer to sustainable tourism, takes aim at government tourism policies which have “largely been deaf to concerns about growth”, as international tourist numbers boomed from 1 million in 1990 to four times that before Covid.

And he says the tourism industry has been heavily subsidised and supported to encourage that growth, despite growing opposition from New Zealanders.

“Tourism occurs in local communities and those communities have the right to inform decision-making about the sort of growth they are prepared to accommodate.”

Upton wants the Department of Conservation “to have the ability to restrict access where the weight of numbers starts to degrade the inspiration or enjoyment that can be derived from a location”.

The growth in freedom camping also needed to be controlled, with vehicles requiring permanently plumbed toilets to be certified as self-contained and therefore able to camp in most areas.

Upton says that for too long debate about tourism has been “couched in the language that marketing and promotion permits” and discussions of environmental effects were “these inconvenient intrusions of reality”.

“If my proposals are deemed to be flawed – or too politically difficult to contemplate – so be it. It is better that they are debated and rejected than avoided.”