Cruise companies aim to be ‘net zero’ by 2050. Can they do it?
Cruise companies are heeding the call to be more sustainable but critics have a point: much more needs to be done
Cruise tourism creates a powerful wake. As ever more ships convey passengers across the world’s seas and down its rivers, so the industry’s environmental impact is coming under closer and closer scrutiny.
Cruising is more popular than ever, according to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), a trade body that represents about 95 per cent of the world’s passenger cruise vessels. In 2024, the number of ships belonging to CLIA members surpassed 300 for the first time, with a capacity of more than 635,000 passengers. The year before, as the effects of the pandemic wore off, CLIA had seen the highest-ever number of passengers – more than 31.7 million – take a cruise, generating US$168.6 billion in economic impact. And forecasts show continued growth, with more than two dozen ships – capable of carrying nearly 40,000 passengers – set to launch this year.
“Sustainability is indeed an incredibly complex topic and I would resist the temptation to find a black or white answer to this big question,” says Akvile Marozaite, CEO of Expedition Cruise Network, a voice for companies that use smaller ships to access remote places.
First, however, it’s worth putting the industry into context. The economic activity of cruising amounts to about 2 per cent of the global travel and tourism sector, and cruise ships comprise less than 1 per cent of the world’s commercial fleet, which is dominated by cargo and container ships, tankers and ferries. It’s not quite the juggernaut some fear it is.
