Thursday, December 14, 2023
The paradisiacal Bora Bora island is part of French Polynesia. It sits in the huge expanse of the south Pacific Ocean. They have make a shift in their tourism policy this year.
In recent decades, that splendour has posed a problem. Bora Bora became one of the world’s most sought-after holiday destinations.
As a result, tourists flocked in large cruise ships overwhelming the island.
It became so overrun that in 2019, Bora Bora promised to tackle the problem by capping cruise visitor numbers from 2022.
Then, French Polynesia made global headlines in 2021. It is by promising to ban cruise ships with more than 3,500 passengers from 2022. It later said it would limit overall tourist numbers.
But this year, a new government in French Polynesia abandoned that pledge. It instead set a goal of nearly doubling visitor numbers by 2033. It has also welcomed large cruise ships to some ports.
The dramatic policy shift has created division within French Polynesia. It is between those who want to grow the tourism sector and others who support a more environmentally friendly model like Bora Bora.
The shift has put cruise ships which serve island tourism but pose risks to the environment under particular scrutiny.
Island ‘invaded’ by tourists
French Polynesia is made up of more than 100 islands including Bora Bora and Tahiti.
Like many Pacific nations, tourism is vital to French Polynesia. This is because it is contributing about 12% of GDP and 80% of export revenue, according to Tahiti Tourism.
The industry’s importance has increased significantly over the past decade. Government figures show this. Tourist numbers are rising from roughly 160,000 in 2011 to 236,000 in 2019. It is mainly from the US and France.
Part of that increase was driven by the growth of cruise tourism across the region.
Rainui Besinau, chair of Bora Bora’s tourism association, remembers days when cruise ships with up to 3,000 passengers each would dock near the island and tourists would flood the streets of Bora Bora.
“The hotels wanted to protect the quality of their service,” Besinau says. “So when the ships arrived, the hotels closed the doors to the people outside. They [didn’t] want to be invaded.”
Instead, most cruise tourists walked several kilometres from the dock to Matira beach, one of Bora Bora’s main attractions.
With so many people in the water, large amounts of sunscreen would slough off, Besinau says, into the pristine reef.
Besinau says before it took steps to restrict arrivals, the island had two tourism models that were fighting.
A luxury model, with a very peaceful island without too many people on the water, and mass tourism with the cruise ships, he says. Those two models are not compatible.
Environmentalists welcomed the move. “Capping tourist numbers is logical,” says Marie-Laure Vanizette, spokesperson for an environmental group to “preserve our assets and our way of life”.
Like many in French Polynesia, Vanizette is not opposed to all cruise ships. She believes smaller vessels can replace hotels, which she worries will devastate the environment and obstruct locals’ access to land.
But for large cruise ships, she believes “having those big monsters coming from outside” hurts the landscape and environmental aspirations. “Big cruise ships have a bad reputation. They’re big emitters.”
According to a 2019 study, a cruise ship can generate a carbon footprint greater than 12,000 cars.
Vessels often use bunker fuel: a tar-like substance that emits air pollution and greenhouse gases when burned.
Many cruise lines have promised to shift to liquified natural gas (LNG), but environmentalists worry that using LNG risks releasing methane, which is also damaging to the climate.
The Cruise Line Industry Association (CLIA), which represents the world’s largest cruise companies, challenges that assessment.
Its members are “committed to reducing carbon intensity as an average across the cruise fleet by 40% by 2030 compared to 2008”, says Joel Katz, Clia’s Australasia managing director, “and are pursuing net zero carbon cruising by 2050.”
French Polynesia to boost arrivals
As Bora Bora scales back on cruise tourists, the rest of French Polynesia wants to take a different approach.
Moetai Brotherson, who became French Polynesia’s president in May, told local media he aims to welcome 600,000 tourists each year by 2033 – last year it had nearly 219,000.
Many tourism operators have cautiously welcomed a plan to grow the sector, but expressed concern over how the additional visitors would be accommodated.
Mo’orea Island is the second most visited island in French Polynesia, and is seeing a boom in tourism, which is leading some locals to be concerned.
Keeping a ‘peaceful island’
The director general of Bora Bora’s council, Maireraurii Leverd, told a news agency that the island would keep its limits on cruise tourists in place, even if the rest of French Polynesia boosted tourist numbers.
Dr Timothy MacNeill, director of sustainability studies at Ontario Tech University, says that cruise tourism is very bad in basically every way.
Almost two years after Bora Bora’s limits on cruise tourists took effect, Besinau says the island is thriving it remains committed to the approach.
Tags: Cruise, net zero carbon emissions
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
