Pristine, popular... imperilled? The environmental consequences of projected tourism growth December 2019 This report has been produced pursuant to subsections 16(1)(a) to (c) of the Environment Act 1986. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is an independent Officer of Parliament, with functions and powers set out in the Environment Act 1986. His role allows an opportunity to provide Members of Parliament with independent advice in their consideration of matters that may have impacts on the environment. This document may be copied provided that the source is acknowledged. This report and other publications by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment are available at pce.parliament.nz. Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Te Kaitiaki Taiao a Te Whare Pāremata PO Box 10-241, Wellington 6143 Aotearoa New Zealand T 64 4 471 1669 F 64 4 495 8350 E [email protected] W pce.parliament.nz December 2019 ISBN 978-0-947517-18-2 (print) 978-0-947517-19-9 (electronic) Photography Hokitika Gorge, sydneydawg2006, Flickr; Tongariro Crossing, Andrea Schaffer, Flickr; Palo Alto Airport, Paul Downey, Flickr. Chapter header fern images by Rob Suisted, www.naturespic.co.nz. Pristine, popular... imperilled? The environmental consequences of projected tourism growth December 2019 Acknowledgements The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is indebted to a number of people who assisted him in bringing this report to completion. Special thanks are due to Lena MacCarthy who led the project, supported by Dr Carl Walrond, Dr Ed Hearnshaw, Shaun Killerby, Dr Robert Dykes, Leana Barriball, Andrew McCarthy and Sally Garden. The Commissioner is also particularly grateful to the following organisations for their time and assistance during the preparation of this report: • Air New Zealand • Ngāi Tahu Tourism • Auckland Council • Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki • Auckland International Airport Limited • Ngāti Tūwharetoa • Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic • Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Whai Rawa Ltd Development • Northland Regional Council • Christchurch International Airport Limited • Queenstown Airport • Department of Conservation • Queenstown Lakes District Council • Environment Canterbury Regional Council • Regional Tourism New Zealand • Environment Southland • Rotorua Economic Development • Federated Mountain Clubs • Ruapehu District Council • Forest & Bird • Sense Partners • Frankton Community Association • SkyCity Entertainment Group Limited • Fresh Info • Stats NZ • Independent Māori Statutory Board • Tangata whenua o Ohinemutu • InterCity Group (NZ) Ltd • Taupō District Council • Kapiti Island Nature Tours • Te Puni Kōkiri • Lake Wanaka Tourism • Tekapo Community Board • Lightning Lab • thinkstep ANZ • Mackenzie District Council • Tourism Export Council of New Zealand • Maritime New Zealand • Tourism Holdings Limited • Ministry for Primary Industries • Tourism Industry Aotearoa • Ministry for the Environment • Tourism New Zealand • Ministry of Business, Innovation and • Twizel Community Board Employment • University of Otago • Ministry of Transport • Venture Southland • New Zealand Conservation Authority • Victoria University Wellington • New Zealand Cruise Association • West Coast Tourism • New Zealand Fish & Game Council • Westland District Council. • New Zealand Māori Tourism Finally, the Commissioner wishes to thank the following individuals for their expertise in reviewing earlier drafts of the report: • Professor Jim McAloon • Professor James Higham • Dave Bamford • Te Rau Kupenga • Professor Susanne Becken • Dr Jeffrey McNeill. • Shamubeel Eaqub Contents Overview 3 1 Tirohanga whānui 9 1 Tourism – difficulties with definitions 15 2 Tourism development in Aotearoa New Zealand 25 3 The present: pressures and perceptions 51 4 A shift towards addressing environmental pressures? 77 5 The challenges of business-as-usual tourism growth 95 6 Environmental vulnerabilities facing the tourism sector in New Zealand 135 7 Going beyond business as usual 145 8 Appendices 147 References 157 2 Asplenium bulbiferum, mouku Commissioner'sOverview overview In the mid-1980s, I was one of many young New Zealanders fighting to halt the logging of primaeval, native forests. It was the culmination of a crescendo of environmental alarm that had been gathering since the 1960s. New Zealanders became aware that some of the last great stands of bush outside of our national parks could disappear within their lifetimes to be replaced with ever more marginal pasture. Nowhere seemed more marginal than the forests south of the Cook River in South Westland. For many people in South Westland, the ongoing extraction of native timber was the only means of economic survival. Being told to stop by a bunch of young (and not so young) people from the other end of the country was a declaration of war. But we had a silver bullet. Tourism. In calling for a permanent halt to all logging we knew jobs would be lost. But tourism would create new ones. Why not leave these magnificent virgin forests intact to be enjoyed by future generations – and make coffee for the visitors instead? Thirty years has passed and there are many more tourists making their way down State Highway 6 into what became a World Heritage Site in 1990. Towns like Fox and Franz are cameos of the way in which tourism has become a plug-in replacement industry in many parts of New Zealand. We are selling an encounter with a stunning physical environment and a raft of services to our visitors. And the quality of the coffee has never been better. The industry’s success is always measured in numbers. They are impressive. In the year that Te Wāhipounamu – South West New Zealand World Heritage Area was declared, 976,000 international visitors came to New Zealand. In 2018 the tally surpassed 3.8 million. Everything has grown – the hotels, the cafes, the gateway city airports, the car rental firms and the pressure of people. These pressures are particularly evident at popular destinations. I have conducted this inquiry to understand what ongoing tourist growth could mean for the environment. In deriving an increasingly significant fraction of national income from tourism, New Zealand is reaping its share of a global phenomenon: an increasing propensity to travel. That applies domestically as well as internationally. Overview And herein lies the conundrum. So much of what New Zealand has to offer centres around an absence of people, starting with a flora and fauna that had not encountered humans until 800 years ago. A sense of remoteness and isolation, both physically and in time, lies at the heart of how so many special places are 4 experienced. Many of our visitors come from places where it is almost impossible to escape the pressure of population. They arrive in a country with a low population density and can, without great effort, rapidly leave the pressure of people behind. As the weight of population and environmental destruction gathers pace at a global level, New Zealand offers fortunate travellers the chance to visit and experience some of the last vestiges of a fast-vanishing world. New Zealanders themselves – often as a result of their own overseas travels – have started to sense that experiences they have taken for granted at home are much rarer and much more at risk than they had realised. In selling access to these experiences, tourism risks becoming an extractive industry in its own right. An inexorable growth in numbers risks an irreversible decline in both environmental quality and human experience of it. That could run the risk of ‘killing the goose that lays the golden egg’. New Zealanders have become familiar with images of sites like Milford or the Tongariro Crossing besieged by visitors. Is this the fate of a succession of fresh destinations as policies of visitor dispersal are promoted as a way of easing pressure on the most popular sites? Or do we instead pursue ‘value’ rather than ‘volume’? This is a common response from those who are uneasy about the pressure of numbers but reluctant to place at risk the increase in national income that is associated with growth. Tourism is a relatively low-wage industry. Aiming for tourism value to grow faster than volume is a sound strategy. However, despite the Government’s efforts over the last decade, tourism spending per visitor has actually remained roughly constant. Further, the Government’s own tourism projections to 2025 indicate the opposite trend – once visitor spend figures are adjusted for inflation, value per visitor is projected to fall. So in fact, the aspiration falls well short of reality. But even if a value-driven strategy were to succeed, an inquiry such as this, focused on the environmental consequences of growth, would run immediately into another, more intractable problem. What is the footprint of that value-led growth? Even if we could arrest the number of people visiting us and, instead, grow their per capita expenditure, would the environmental (and social) impacts be any better? Tourists with more spending power are likely to be people with the capacity to consume more energy, generate more waste and require infrastructure that makes heavier claims on land and water. If we are swapping freedom campers making sorties on foot into our wilderness for wealthy travellers inspecting shrinking glaciers from helicopters, haven’t we just exchanged one sort of environmental footprint for another? This of course exposes a more fundamental issue that makes tourism such a fascinating and tricky activity to examine. Very simply,