Climate change ‘a major threat’ to the tourism sector

South African National Parks (SANParks) experts said the tourism industry has recovered from the impact of Covid and considered the current load shedding an opportunity to go green.

Speaking at the Africa Travel Indaba 2023 in Durban, SANParks’ new CEO Hapiloe Sello said SA needed more conversations about conservation.

“We don’t join the masses of just bringing down the government, no. Tourism is our bread and butter. We should be talking about pollution, conservation and the environmental impact. We are approaching it from that perspective,” she said.

Sello is the first female CEO of SANParks since it was establishment in 1926.

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“There are so many challenges that face us in conserving our biodiversity. Climate change is a major threat to the tourism sector,” she said.

Sello said responsible tourism was community inclusion.

Load shedding impact

SANParks managing executive of the Kruger, Howard Hendricks, said load shedding seriously affected tourism in terms of consumption.

“Not only was diesel expensive, but we had to deal with noise and pollution. This is something that wasn’t appropriate for tourism and the experience thereof. We are seeing some steady recovery and it is very positive. It’s going better than before Covid, we are catching up,” he said.

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Hendricks said there were government initiatives to deal with load shedding nationally.

“For us and our role this is an opportunity to look at renewed energy and sustainability,” he said.

Kruger Park Scientific Services’ Dr Danny Govender said load shedding and ecotourism were incompatible.

“We need to think about scaling up and bringing in an energy strategy to SANParks to reduce our footprint,” she said.

Govender said about 60% of SANParks energy consumption was in Kruger Park.

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“[Quick maths] would suggest going solar, but we don’t have the funds. While we know with renewables now, you could get back your investment within five to 10years, but it’s the initial onset we don’t have,” she said.

Tourism ‘recovering well’

Chief executive officer at the Tourism Business Council of South Africa, Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa said the industry was recovering well, given where it was.

“When we look at the numbers of tourists arriving in the country, we see we are doing better than last year, with over 90% compared to March last year.

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“If you look at the February and March 2023 numbers this year, there was another 10% increase,” he said.

Tshivhengwa said they now had to ensure the recoveries were sustainable.

“South Africans were now travelling to their own country, that’s good. But we still don’t have enough international tourists,” he said.

Tshivhengwa said load shedding had a devastating impact from a revenue point of view.

“We need to ensure the little profits we made, were not eroded by the high energy costs. When the profits are eroded, we are not working forward but we are working backwards,” he said.

– marizkac@citizen.co.za