Tourism, sustainable development and equity: Developing countries say "your carbon emissions are on us!"

Mozambique, 21 OCTOBER 2007. On my 16-seater Beech 1900 from Vilanculos to Johannesburg, read the excellent Africa Geographic including a letter from Dave Martin from Eastern Cape, South Africa talking about an earlier article [unseen] on the sustainability of flying. He writes: "climate change is a result of the rich world's inability to live sustainably. However, the solution is not to condemn the developing world to even greater misery by reducing air travel. The rich need to decrease their emissions drastically ... while Africans are entitled to increase ours moderately as we pull ourselves out of poverty. I believe the way to attribute emissions from holiday travel is to accrue them to the destination country. One million foreign tourists fly to South Africa annually, each emitting around 2.3 tonnes of carbon - increasing the per capita load for South Africans by 0.051 tonnes annually. So to the rich world, we say "cancel your holidays in Europe, Australia and the US and come to the developing world ... your carbon emissions are on us!".