Dr. Amrik Singh Thakur
Tourism depends on the very ecosystems it is helping to unravel. Coral reefs, alpine meadows, wetlands, higher altitude, hills valleys, meadows, forests and glaciers are not scenery attached to the product; they are the product. Yet the sector keeps growing. UN Tourism estimates that 1.52 billion international tourists travelled in 2025, about 4 per cent more than in 2024, Breakdown by Region (2025) Europe: 793 million arrivals (+4% year-on-year, +6% above 2019 levels) Asia and the Pacific: 331 million arrivals (+6% year-on-year, 9% below 2019 levels) Americas: 218 million arrivals (+1% year-on-year, led by South America at +7%) Middle East: Nearly 100 million arrivals (+3% year-on-year, 39% above 2019 levels) Africa: 81 million arrivals (+8% year-on-year, led by North Africa at +11%) and forecasts in 2026 Global international tourist arrivals are projected to reach a record 1.57 billion in 2026, marking a 2% increase compared to 2025 according to the WTM Global Travel Report 2026. International overnight arrivals grew by 2% in the first quarter of 2026 to roughly 307 million tourists, though momentum moderated mid-year due to geopolitical conflicts and rising costs. As negotiators prepare to convene at COP31 in Antalya on 9 November, shortly after the biodiversity talks in Yerevan, tourism has a choice: remain a beneficiary of nature that quietly draws it down, or become a deliberate contributor to its recovery.
The first obligation is honesty about emissions. Estimate that tourism generated roughly 7.3% to 8.8% of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, generating roughly 5.2 gigatons of CO2 equivalent (Gt CO2-e) annually. More than twice the pace of the world economy. Aviation and road transport are leading contributors to that footprint, and air passenger traffic rose about 7 per cent through October 2025. Technological optimism has not delivered the cuts promised. Any serious discussion of nature-based solutions must begin here, because they cannot be allowed to become a licence to keep flying and building as before.
Over tourism sharpens the problem locally. Crowded trails, water-hungry hotels, unmanaged waste and ribbon development press hardest on fragile mountain, coastal and wetland ecosystems, and the costs fall on residents who rarely chose the growth. When carrying capacity is exceeded, ecosystems lose resilience and host communities lose patience, and both erode the reputation on which destinations trade. Visitor management, seasonal spreading and honest limits on new construction are therefore ecological measures as much as commercial ones, and they should be planned together with restoration instead of being treated as separate projects. Destinations that postpone these decisions will eventually face them as emergencies, with fewer options and higher bills.
Within those limits the evidence for restoration is strong. Reforestation, wetland restoration and soil carbon sequestration can remove carbon while sheltering species, stabilising slopes and regulating water. But the benefits depend on how the work is done show that restoring natural forests captures carbon more effectively and durably than plantations, and the joint IPBES-IPCC workshop report warns that poorly designed measures such as monoculture afforestation can weaken biodiversity while delivering modest climate gains. Nature-based solutions work where they are matched to local ecosystems and informed by local knowledge. It is the way we do it, not merely that we do it. For tourism, this means moving from minimising harm, with fewer plastic bottles and lower energy bills, towards actively restoring the landscapes that visitors consume. Careful design, long-term monitoring and adaptive management keep promises honest and verifiable.
That shift is also a question of justice. Estimate that Indigenous peoples manage or hold tenure over about a quarter of the world’s land surface, including much of the remaining nature tourists travel to see. Ecotourism delivers conservation only where communities hold real rights, share benefits fairly and take part in decisions. Restoration projects that dispossess residents, or that sell carbon credits from community land without consent, simply reproduce the extractive patterns that created the crisis. Free, prior and informed consent, secure tenure and transparent benefit-sharing are therefore design conditions, not courtesies. Done properly, they generate a positive multiplier effect: wages for nursery workers, guides and rangers; demand for local food and crafts; and skills that remain in the village when the visitors leave.
Collaboration is the third requirement. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) are the two leading global scientific bodies advising policymakers on climate and nature. The IPCC and IPBES, which assess climate and biodiversity respectively, held their first joint workshop only in December 2020, despite the obvious connections. IPBES’s 2024 Nexus Assessment drew on some 6,500 publications to evaluate 71 response options across biodiversity, water, food, health and climate, and concluded that isolated approaches create trade-offs that integrated ones avoid. Tourism has the same silo problem. Environment ministries, tourism boards, municipalities, hoteliers and village councils work to separate budgets and calendars, while conservation receives only about 3 per cent of global climate finance. No single actor can restore a watershed that crosses five jurisdictions and a hundred ownerships.
A striking and accurate summary of how the global climate crisis manifests locally as an immediate, severe disaster. The figures below shared vividly highlight the cascading impacts of climate change: an increase in extreme weather events leads directly to infrastructure failure, community isolation, and economic destabilization. Himachal Pradesh shows how local this global argument is. Between 20 June and 7 September 2025, official figures put monsoon losses at Rs 4,080 crore, with rainfall 45 per cent above normal and 135 major landslides, 95 flash floods and 45 cloudbursts recorded. Roads closed, villages were cut off and tourism badly suffered. Climate change alone did not cause this, but slope cutting, unplanned construction and degraded catchments magnify it. The state’s forests, Ramseur wetlands such as Chandertal and Renuka, and apple-belt soils are tourism infrastructure of the most valuable kind. Protecting them is adaptation policy, not charity.
What would a doable blueprint look like? Five steps are realistic within a three-year horizon. First, measure: require destinations and larger operators to report transport, energy and waste emissions using recognised tourism accounting frameworks. Second, reduce first: prioritise rail and road-sharing, cap aviation-dependent growth strategies and electrify accommodation, before any offsetting claim. Third, restore locally: a small, transparent visitor contribution, collected through accommodation bills and ring-fenced for catchment restoration, native planting, wetland protection and soil-health projects chosen by village committees. Fourth, build capacity: train community members in nursery management, monitoring, guiding and enterprise accounting, so that restoration creates durable jobs rather than temporary labour. Fifth, institutionalise collaboration: establish destination-level councils that bring together forest, tourism, disaster management and panchayat actors, with shared data and shared budgets. These steps need modest funds, existing legal instruments and sustained coordination rather than new technology.
A word on the literature is warranted. The sources reviewed here treat tourism as a driver of emissions, as a victim of climate impacts, and as a possible conservation funder, but rarely as an organised actor in landscape restoration governed by community rights. Evidence on how visitor-funded restoration performs over decades, and who benefits, remains thin. That gap is where tourism scholars can add value, by testing the model above through comparative destination studies and publishing the results openly. Interdisciplinary teams of ecologists, economists, anthropologists and tourism managers, working with communities as co-researchers, are best placed to do this work.
The wake-up call is therefore simple, and it runs from the global to the local. Tourism must cut emissions first, restore ecosystems second, and share power throughout. The tools exist, the evidence is accumulating, and the next fortnight of negotiations will show whether governments and industry are prepared to join them up. For tourism scholars, educators and practitioners, the task is to turn this moment into capacity that communities own. Delay will cost destinations their seasons, and communities their futures.
Dr. Amrik Singh Thakur
