Life Cycle Assessment of a Spanish Pilgrimage Route: A New Style of Tourism for Promoting Sustainable Tourism and Curbing Climate Change

From an economic point of view, the tourism sector is one of the most important in the world, with religious tourism, such as pilgrimages, being a growth area. However, tourism activities also make a significant contribution to CO2 emissions (roughly 8% of the world’s carbon emissions). In this framework, the main objective of this research is to develop an integrated sustainable model by assessing the impact of pilgrimages on Camino Lebaniego in the Cantabrian region, which is one of the most popular routes in northern Spain. To do this, it is necessary to quantify the environmental impacts of this activity realized in 3 days by a pilgrim by using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, in which four environmental impact categories are considered. Simapro 9.3 software and the Ecoinvent and Agribalyse databases were used to assess the environmental impacts. The results showed that the electricity consumption of the hostels and the food eaten by the pilgrims at the evening meals were the hotspots of the system under study.