“I think a value shift is needed. […] This whole idea of regenerative tourism – that’s taking off both with destinations, but also governments and so on. It’s actually an expression of [the shift].” — Dr. Susanne Becken

Understanding the truth about travel, tourism, and the climate crisis isn’t always straightforward or easy to grasp. That’s what makes Dr. Susanne Becken’s insights so valuable. 

A Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University, Susanne is one of the world’s leading thinkers on the topic, with over two decades of research on sustainability and tourism’s impact on the environment. She’s also an effective science communicator who makes the latest knowledge about travel, sustainability, and climate change accessible to everyone. 

In her conversation with Rodney Payne, Susanne touches on many aspects of tourism’s future, including sustainable aviation fuel, climate justice, economic solutions, and travel behaviour. And while these present enormous challenges for our industry, they also hold the seeds of transformation. According to Susanne, “we need the combination of hope and real transformation on the ground,” because “In 20 years, if the climate projections unfold, there won’t be any tourism.” 

What can travel leaders do, given these forecasts? Susanne sees regenerative tourism as a source of hope that can inspire positive momentum. Gaining that kind of momentum is one of the reasons we at Destination Think share so many positive examples through Travel Beyond. That momentum, in turn, can help convince policymakers and governments of the need for meaningful, tangible change—change that has yet to happen at the scale that’s needed. This is especially important given the uncertainty about whether sustainable technologies and innovations will remain viable at the volume required to power the mobility the travel industry currently demands.

Ultimately for Susanne, there needs to be a shift in mindset, and regenerative tourism is the start of that collective desire to reconsider our values. As she puts it, “people are longing for something. Something maybe utopian, something where we reconnect, something where we have true harmony with each other, with nature, without materialistic values.” To preserve the travel industry, this shift in mindset isn’t just desirable, it’s essential.

This episode of Travel Beyond, Dr. Susanne Becken discusses:

• The big-picture realities of the climate crisis.
• Whether sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is truly sustainable.
• Why we need to decouple the tourism economy from aviation growth.
• How taking longer, fewer trips can make a meaningful impact.
• Avenues of positive change.

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Show notes

Griffith University — A university in South East Queensland, Australia that focuses on addressing social and environmental issues. 

Sustainable aviation fuels — A liquid fuel alternative to petroleum-based jet fuel made from renewable biomass and waste resources. 

Episode transcript

Dr. Susanne Becken: We need the combination of hope and real transformation on the ground. So to show people it can be done and then we almost, well, I believe anyway, we need that warning on the other side that if we don’t, you know, we will fight climate crisis. We will have global food shortages. When the economy gets hit by these massive events, people will not afford to travel anyway.

So in 20 years, if the climate projections unfold, there won’t be any tourism. So you’re better off to plan now for it, you know, and make sure we can keep this going. You need the help and we need a bit of the reality check of where we’re actually heading.

David Archer: Hello and welcome to Travel Beyond, where we partner with leading destinations to explore the greatest challenges facing communities and the planet, surfacing their most inspiring solutions. I’m David Archer from Destination Think, recording from Haida Gwaii, the territory of the Haida Nation off the north coast of British Columbia in Canada.

On this show, we look at the role of travel and choose to highlight destinations that are global leaders. We talk to the changemakers who are addressing regenerative travel through action in their communities, and often from the bottom up. With today’s guest, we’re actually going to zoom out to get to a wide perspective, maybe the widest perspective on travel, sustainability, and climate change, Dr. Susanne Beckin is a professor of sustainable tourism at Griffith University in Australia, and she’s one of the world’s leading thinkers and researchers on this topic. She’s been studying sustainability and tourism’s impact on the environment for more than two decades, and beyond her academic research, she’s also an effective science communicator who can bring us kind of the unvarnished truth about travel and tourism and the climate crisis in a way that everyone can understand.

In this conversation, she and Rodney Payne touch on many aspects of the future of tourism, including sustainable aviation fuel, climate justice, economic solutions, and travel behavior. These are enormous topics that contain huge challenges, of course, but they also hold the seeds of transformation. And I’m not sure about you, but I often find it difficult to balance hope and concern for the future when I’m thinking ahead.

But Susanne’s words have helped me to put our work into perspective as a reminder of why it’s important to share so many positive examples and keep the momentum going as we’ve been doing on this podcast. So I hope you enjoy this interview as well. Here are Dr. Susanne Beckin and Rodney Payne. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: My name is Susanne Becken. I’m a professor of sustainable tourism at Griffith University in Australia. 

Rodney Payne: And you’ve also done a lot of work on decarbonizing aviation at the UN level. Can you tell me a little bit about that? 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Yeah, for the last 20 years or so, we’ve been working on how we can reduce the carbon footprint of tourism. It obviously starts with measuring it and then putting in place initiatives that gradually reduce the emissions.

What has happened in the meantime is of course, tourism has grown a lot. So much that any improvements that were made indeed, um, are far than compensated. So that’s one of the biggest challenges. It’s just this growth and no technology in some ways is keeping pace with it. Let alone some of the, I mean, we found some interesting trends that people have actually traveled further and further away. And of course, the further you travel and also more and more by air, the bigger the carbon footprint. So these trends don’t help. 

Rodney Payne: And you’re seeing no technological solutions at all that will fix it. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Well, there’s a whole bunch of technologies, of course, but the question is, are they scalable? And I mean, let’s just hit the elephant in the room, aviation.

Um, we’ve got sustainable aviation fuels, we’ve got electricity, we’ve got hydrogen, they are all kind of on the horizon. But it’s the sheer scale. That we need to effectively replace. I mean, kerosene is a wonderful thing. It’s, it’s a high energy density fuel. And all of a sudden you try to kind of make it from scratch and replace it at the time when everyone else wants to decarbonize as well.

So we’re really struggling. I mean, even with sustainable aviation fuels to get that volume, um, it will be a big challenge and the other technologies will really not come into scale until 2040, 2050 and and you know the climate change timelines mean it’ll be too late. 

Rodney Payne: Sustainable aviation fuel. Is it really sustainable?

Dr. Susanne Becken: Um, it’s sustainable at a small scale, uh, with a lot of caveats around it. Where’s the feedstock coming from? You know, how is it distributed? Um, we know relatively little about the non CO2 effects, so I would say at scale it’s probably not sustainable. It’ll be a huge, um, cost to the world to maintain flying when really other parts of the economy and society need to decarbonize.

So in that sense, it’s, I don’t think it’s sustainable. Um, I think people really start calling it alternative aviation fuels, which I would fully endorse. It’s an alternative where there’s more or less sustainable. We did, we don’t, it could even be backfiring. 

Rodney Payne: That’s definitely how I’ve been framing it in my mind.

And when I talk about it. So, as you know, I’ve spent my career, the 20 years of growth, promoting travel and really struggling with that in the moment we’re in and trying to reconcile the benefits that travel bring and all of the amazing things that travel brings us with the moment we’re in. How do you think about that?

And, you know, you’re, you’ve just gotten on a plane to go home to see your parents. How do you, how do you feel when you get on an airplane? Go ahead. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: I think that tourism really can bring a lot of opportunity to a place and you’ve got plenty of examples where that’s happening to really regenerate literally the location, but, um, we need to decouple it from that aviation growth.

I mean, the aviation sector has exploded exponentially and, and maybe there’s a lot of tourism that can be had without high carbon mobility. You know, so traveling closer to home, maybe staying longer, that’s definitely an opportunity. So it’s not the end of tourism, but we really need to question that, that air mobility.

Rodney Payne: How do you think about cruise? 

Dr. Susanne Becken: It’s even worse. I mean, the, the, the data show the carbon intensity is massive and then you have on top, um, a lot of social problems, um, exploitation of staff, et cetera. Then the whole overtourism phenomenon, you know, when people disembark en masse and the destination is not ready, plus other environmental issues around pollution.

So I, I think it’s, it’s a sector that’s just waiting to be regulated. 

Rodney Payne: There’s a few examples that I’m aware of. But few and far between of any places or tourism businesses that are really, that I can find that are really taking this seriously. Right. And I’ve questioned leaving the industry and going to work on the problem in other places.

I’ve spoken to other people who are becoming aware of the problem, who are thinking about leaving the industry. Are you seeing anyone in the world in travel really take it as seriously as we need to be? 

Dr. Susanne Becken: I think the tourism and travel industry globally are still having their head in the sand. Um, I think, um, we collectively failed the climate goals.

There’s now meaningful, really transformational change, and in the moment, we’re getting away with it. Demand, as you know, is massive after COVID. So in the moment, the regulation doesn’t keep up with it. So, so I think there’s a bit of avoidance thinking still going on. And, um, what is happening is a lot of, putting a bit of a green paint on the existing products and ways of doing business.

So that’s not good enough. The question is when will it catch up and how and will regulation effectively be the way or will it be the industry who, um, you know, self regulate, but I can’t see that the industry transforms. There will be incremental improvements. It’s happening, but not enough, not, not, not at scale and not at pace.

So, yeah, I, I feel for you. One day I asked myself sometimes as well, is it the best industry? But then it is a massive global industry that also needs screening, right? It needs to change and people need to work on it and it has the potential to produce good outcomes. 

Rodney Payne: I’ve been thinking a lot more about those good outcomes.

If you’re, if you think at the moment that. Travel and hospitality is somewhere in the order of 8 percent of global emissions and a similar size of our GDP globally. If you were to only decarbonize emissions within destinations, we’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic because we’re ignoring scope three.

And I, I almost wonder given that how hard it is to decarbonize transportation at the moment and scale that up with the regulatory approvals that are going to be needed in a, in a global way. Is there a way you think we could use travel as a catalyst to get the rest of the world to decarbonize much more rapidly while we’re decarbonizing?

Dr. Susanne Becken: I can’t quite see that happen. I mean, the biggest Achilles heel of the tourism industry is the mobility, right? If you, if you strip that out and minimize that and you achieve all these positive local outcomes without the massive mobility footprint, and then I think, and you’ve worked on this as well, that you have your local supply chains, you have small you know, businesses, entrepreneurship, you’ve got the cash coming in to actually rebuild some of the places that have been degraded.

So I think there’s a lot of potential, but it’s the mobility and the, you know, and ultimately what we must remember, I think what’s really creeping up on the industry is the whole climate justice question. That it’s a discretionary activity. So we’re talking about, you know, this 10 percent of footprint is done by effectively a very small part of the global population.

And that’s where I think also, you know, when we talk about, um, renewable energy, sustainable aviation fuels is that fear, you know, when, when other continents don’t even have enough clean energy for their daily needs. So I think that will come down the line and tourism has not engaged with it. 

Rodney Payne: Did you see what Barcelona has done recently?

This one gives me a little bit of hope. So they took a hundred million dollars of their tourism tax, a hundred million euros, and they’re investing it in heat pumps and solar panels, and they’re putting it on schools and low income houses. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: That’s great. And that would be that idea of giving back, right?

And then you would have to ask, okay, could you achieve that? And Barcelona, of course, has, for example, a problem with cruise ships. You know, could you still do good, but cut out some of the bits that really undermine the good course? You know, and that’s where it takes, it takes determination and actually quite a bit of courage as well by the decision makers.

Rodney Payne: Tourism’s around 10 trillion a year towards global GDP. And the latest stat I saw is that we need to be spending about 5 trillion a year as a global civilization on decarbonization, not just in travel, but the whole world. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Yeah. 

Rodney Payne: Those numbers, order of magnitude, seem similar. You know, if we had a 50 percent tax on all tourism and that for a period of time funded decarbonization, Like Barcelona has done.

What do you think? 

Dr. Susanne Becken: I mean, look, if you think about, I mean, think about Greta Thunberg and when she said, you are not acting like the house is on fire. If you truly believe the house was on fire and like what you say, that the global travel and tourism industry spends more money, then then we would need potentially to solve our existential climate crisis of the elite of the traveling elite, 10 percent or so of the global population, then you say, okay, what, what’s the priority here?

And of course it comes down to a collective interest versus individual. That’s the challenge, but I think it’s good sometimes to put into perspective. 

Rodney Payne: Everything you’ve said has just been like totally on point and in a really like human way of talking. You mentioned that it’s going to take until 2040 or 2050 to decarbonize, but we don’t have that long.

Can you tell me about the severity of the climate crisis, and have we underestimated, is it coming quicker than 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Yeah, and I think, I mean, let’s just take the, the example of this week, Dubai and Oman, the floods. I mean, they went beyond what any climate model would have predicted, because climate models are still designed, um, I guess, to model the future within reason, you know, within statistical reason.

And what we see now is these phenomena. That really go off the charts in terms of impacts for a combination of reasons. And I think anyone who had been in Dubai at the airport there would have probably realized that this is mother nature at force, you know, and we’ve seen, I mean, the Hawaii fires and, um, Greek Island fires, et cetera, et cetera, that people, I do think start to feel a little bit, this is serious.

I mean, we have now exceeded the 1. 5 degrees. And, and yes, that hopefully will go back again when the NNU is finished, but it gives us a little bit of an idea, you know, what this means. And so I think, um, yeah, the awareness is, is increasing. I think the question is still, um, individual decision making when I can still do certain things that are enjoyable as opposed to a collective responsibility.

Rodney Payne: You live in New Zealand and you have a European background. And that tells me a little bit about where your values probably lie. Because this is such an individual versus collective problem, uh, the action that we need to take. Do you think that we need a value shift? 

Dr. Susanne Becken: I think a value shift is needed. And I actually think this whole idea of regenerative tourism, you know, that’s taking off, um, both with destinations, but also, you know, governments and so on.

It’s actually an expression of that. People are longing for something. You know, something maybe utopian, something where we reconnect, something where we have true harmony with each other, with nature, without materialistic values. So I think people are longing for that, but then we are built into a system of consumption and pace, you know, and our lives are the same.

It’s, it’s about speed. Um, so I think, I think that mindset shift is needed. Um, I mean, the other thing. It’s about the precautionary principle. And again, that’s that requires a bit of future awareness and thinking. But we are literally growing and growing travel and tourism in the absence of real solutions.

So every year that goes by, and we’ve crunched the numbers, every year goes by, the tourism sector is missing its climate goals by more. Instead of saying, okay, we need to work on a solution steady state, but that’s I know it’s very difficult. But, um, so the problem is actually getting harder and not better and 2030 is not too far away.

Rodney Payne: Yeah, I mean, that’s it, right? Like that. That’s the challenge. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Just to my defense, by the way, you said to say a few things to rattle, to rattle people, because the video that you showed me, of course, with the transformation in Copenhagen, that actually presents some hope. And I think that is much needed. So we need the combination of hope and real transformation on the ground.

So to show people it can be done. And then we almost, well, I believe anyway, we need that warning on the other side, that if we don’t. You know, we will fight climate crisis. We will have global food shortages. We will have, and that’s what I try to sometimes tell the tourism industry, when the economy gets hit by these massive events, people will not afford to travel anyway.

So in 20 years, if the climate projections unfold, there won’t be any tourism. So you’re better off to plan now for it, you know, and, and make sure we can keep this going. Maybe you scale it back or change it a little bit, but, um, to just blindly think that people, I mean, you see tourism forecasts for 2050. 10 billion people now.

Are you really thinking on this planet that 10 billion people will be able to crisscross the planet? I just don’t think so. And so that’s almost a bit naive thinking. Anyway, so you need the help and we need a bit of the reality check of where we’re actually heading. 

Rodney Payne: What I’m wondering is if we can bring more people into their climate journey through the inspiring hope.

I worry that you and I live in a little bit of a bubble where some people are talking about regenerative tourism, but there’s a massive gap between a regenerative tourism plan and anything really changing. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Yeah. Look, I think on the ground with people, with destinations, working on the tangible hope that actually generates a positive momentum.

I think that’s probably the approach. At the top level, maybe working with policy makers and governments, that’s where we need to have to stick the carrot. So the carrot at the ground and the stick up there to say, okay, certain things just you can’t have. I mean, even airlines sets that do a lot supposedly, and then you get plastic bottles on, I know it’s, it’s a small thing, but even a symbolic one, you shouldn’t get a plastic bottle on a one hour flight, you know, these are things where you then think there’s. It’s 2024 now. We don’t need that anymore on the one hour flight. 

Rodney Payne: Yeah. I’ve been wondering and thinking about my own. Sort of journey of understanding in relation to climate and the big systems we live within and the biosphere generally and thinking about what drew me in and how much time I’ve had to wrestle with it and thinking about how many more people will go on that journey of sort of understanding and being faced with how near term and severe this problem is and I’m wondering if the perspective that you get through travel, hopefully low carbon, close by travel, is one of the things that pulls more people in, right?

Starting to think about removing plastics, not taking short haul flights, it gets our brains turning a little bit, and then you eventually have realizations yourself that maybe you wouldn’t have had by, you know, the last 30 years of international agreements and climate science, you know, being ignored. I remember when I was a kid, the Kyoto Protocol was signed and we were going to decarbonize the world.

And that was 32 years ago, and all we’ve done since is go in the opposite direction. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: That’s right. I mean, there’s definitely a role for tourism to showcase positive things to people, different behaviors, different technologies. But then, of course, we must remember there’s also vast parts of tourism that are simply mass tourism that only exist because they are the conveyor belt.

Cheap. Literally. I mean, people in New Zealand sometimes compare or say tourism is a primary industry. It’s just like milking cows. You put them to sleep at night and you milk them every day. You know, it’s the same thing. And that tourism model. That leaves little room, but of course there’s others where you say people really, especially people living in cities, you know, and then they, they realize where the X come from, for example, or what it’s like to walk in scent. So I think that’s, that’s an important role. 

Rodney Payne: You’ve been thinking about this a really long time. If I gave you a magic wand and you could make changes in the system to try to find the right balance or off ramps from, from the hamster wheel that we’re all on, what, what changes do you think we need to make?

Dr. Susanne Becken: I think we just need to pull back a little. And, and, you know, when I say we, we need, we always talk about the more privileged part of the people who engage in tourism, right? We need to pull back a little bit. Um, uh, less is more. I mean, I always, I often actually use the word less is more. Make it count. And in any way, when you travel somewhere, um, and think about the, the, the, the footprint you create and the good that you, so that needs to be in a much better balance.

Rodney Payne: If you think about the 2030 goals at the international level of roughly halving carbon emissions, if we were all to travel half as much for twice as long. Would that fix the problem? 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Um, I haven’t done quite the maths, but I think given that we want to half emissions by 2030, um, that’s right. You’re probably back of the envelope, right?

And, um, I mean, this is the same for countries where you say, okay, if you achieve, you double the length of stay, you only need half of the visitors, you can save marketing budget, et cetera. So, yes, exactly. So that’s exactly the kind of shift, um, that we would need. 

Rodney Payne: You can still have the same number of people in the destination at any one time.

It’s just half as many people moving around. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Thank you. So you want to maintain the visitor nights. You want to maintain the visitor nights. Ideally, you want to increase the value add. For those visitor nights, so you know, there could still be growth in the economic sense, get more value, get also other values from those visitor nights, people engaging positively, et cetera, less sort of movement.

So the transaction cost effectively of that goodness. 

Rodney Payne: So before 2030, you and I need to try and usher in a globally coordinated policy to mandate double the length of stay and half the volume of flying. We turn every cruise ship into social housing and we park it in the harbours of the biggest cities.

That’s right. Good. We copy Barcelona and we take their tourism tax idea. We make a global 50 percent tax on every travel expenditure and we pour that into the green transition and then our work is done. Simple. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: I like that. It’s a, it’s a tourism redistribution model, you know. 

Rodney Payne: Well, I, I appreciate you, um, giving me some time to talk.

I, as you know, I’m really struggling. You know, I, I put on a bright face and smile and I think a lot of us do, but it, it’s hard to live in both worlds. And I think there’s few people that I have in my circle that I can talk to that understand. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: It is hard. Um, the thing is, alternative is even harder, I find the alternative of giving up and throwing the towel and saying it’s not nothing we can do.

That’s even harder than battling every day and trying to be positive and working with the seeds of hope, you know, and the willing that are out there and just hoping that it’s great scales up, you know, and that there will be a shift. So that’s the only way forward. 

Rodney Payne: There are so many reasons for hope, right?

We, we are decarbonizing. We are investing an enormous amount of money. The challenge is it needs to be massively accelerated. That’s the challenge. One thing I sort of my, my mantra internally that helps me is to think about there never having been a more important time to be alive. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Make a difference.

Rodney Payne: Yeah. Thank you. 

Dr. Susanne Becken: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I mean, that’s right. You, you, I mean, I sometimes think of that you’ve been given the gift of life. You’ve got to respect it. And make it worthwhile, right? Make it, make it count. 

David Archer: This has been Travel Beyond presented by Destination Think, and you just heard from Dr. Susanne Becken, Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University.

We’ll include links to more resources on the blog for this episode at DestinationThink. com. This episode has been produced and has theme music composed by me, David Archer, Sara Raymond de Booy is my co producer, and Lindsay Payne and Cory Price provided production support. You can help more people find the show by subscribing to future episodes and by leaving us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or Spotify.

Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.