Tourism carbon footprint inventories: A review of the environmentally extended input-output approach

Environmentally extended input-output models have emerged as a new macro level approach to compile tourism carbon footprint inventories. Set against the traditional bottom-up method, this paper explains how environmentally extended input-output models can assist to address multiple aspects of tourism carbon management, and to review current applications for the system boundary issue, identifying variations due to carbon footprint definition, data, and the economic model itself. Recommendations are made on improving consistency of application through the tourism satellite account framework and the treatment of embedded emissions of imports. Last, we propose an agenda to integrate its procedure into national systems linking the sectoral carbon emissions of tourism with international climate commitments and progressing implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.