ABSTRACT
In discussing the ways in which sustainability in agri-food systems could be achieved by 2030 given the scale and rate of global environmental change and global population growth, Green et al. (2003: 157) emphasised that any critique ‘has to confront the obvious problems of industrialized agriculture and its associated consumption patterns’. In many ways the same can be argued of tourism, given the need to confront its own industrialised system and growing consumption in the face of global change (Gössling et al. 2009; Hall 2010a, 2011 a; Gössling et al. 2012 b; Scott et al. 2012; see also Chapter 1 above). According to the UN World Tourism Organisation (2011) international tourist arrivals are forecast to increase by an average 3.3 per cent a year between 2010 and 2030 and to reach 1.8 billion by 2030. This means that arrivals are projected to pass the 1 billion mark in 2012, up from 940 million in 2010. However, it should also be noted that international tourism only accounts for approximately 16 per cent of all tourist mobility, the remainder being domestic tourism activity. If this same ratio is maintained, by 2030 there will be 11.25 billion domestic tourism trips a year, a figure well in excess of a tourist trip per person expected to be on the planet then.
