Measuring Tourism’s Environmental Impact in the Nordics
This project aims to create a common Nordic calculation approach aligned with international standards, enabling countries to measure tourism’s impact on climate and resources. By developing comparable, actionable data, the project supports evidence-based policies and fosters collaboration across the region.
The project began in 2022 with exploratory feasibility studies and Nordic capacitybuilding and quickly gained international attention outside the Nordics. Experimental pilot calculations have been made, and in 2024 Denmark launched their first official statistics of the carbon footprint to support this work (the Danish carbon footprint of tourism is funded outside this project, please see).
The project is the second work package of Measuring Regional Tourismand Tourism’s Environmental Impact in the Nordics, funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers. The project is led by CRT in collaboration with VisitDenmark and the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth.
To support Agenda 2030 and the Nordic efforts of becoming the world’s most sustainable region, harmonized environmental tourism data is needed. The project aligns with the UN-endorsed statistical framework of measuring sustainable tourism (SF-MST) and positions the Nordics as early adopters and global examples of how the SF-MST can be operationalized.
Hence, the work has laid the foundation for broader adoption across the Nordic region and internationally, demonstrating the feasibility of integrating economic and environmental data in tourism statistics and paving the way for futurecross-country comparisons and policy use.
