Publications & Reviews

Review of Tourism, Climate Change and Sustainability

Tourism, Climate Change & SustainabilityTourism, Climate Change & Sustainability

Edited by Maharaj Vijay Reddy and Keith Wilkes.

Routledge, ISBN: 978-1-84971-422-8, September 2012 - 284 pages 

This volume, edited by Bournemouth University’s Maharaj Vijay Reddy and Keith Wilkes, was written in the run up to Rio +20 (United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development - 20-22 June 2012) and almost a year later remains a valuable contribution. Its main strength, and at the same time a weakness, is that it inardventedly reflects and records the non-binding attitudes towards Climate Change (CC) in global and tourism governance as well as the indifferent (or perhaps hypocritical) stance of big tourism and the inertia of many small businesses.

A central assumption running through most chapters is that CC is now inevitable and that businesses and vulnerable destinations, with or without the help of their governments need to quickly wake up so as to adapt or reinvent themselves and limit the damage to them. None of the authors consider at all alternative scenarios, such as systemic success in avoiding CC through reform or a technological revolution, or radical (grassroots) antisystemic change in tourism, the broader economy and society along the lines of the climate justice movement.


The book tries to match and balance research initiatives with case studies worldwide. Chapters are broken into three categories : 1. Sustainability, climate change and tourism: conceptual issues, 2. Responses and initiatives of regional, national and international agencies, and 3. Emerging techniques and research implications. The contributors hail from four continents and 10 countries (Netherlands, Botswana, Brazil, Australia, France, New Zealand, United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, Finland). Nearly all are academics (unfortunately no practitioners), including 5 PhD students – an indication of growing academic interest in CC. The authors specialisations include tourism management, environmental systems analysis, environmental economics, environmental engineering and psychodynamics. Peculiarly there is little material on the continental United States, key tourism destinations such as Spain, and China, India and Russia which are all pivotal in all CC discussions.


The introductory chapter (Ch. 1) sets out the agenda and usefully reviews the long and arduous process for policy-makers in realising the interdependencies between sustainability and tourism in the 40 years from Stockholm 1972, to the 1987 Bruntland Commission to IPCC 1988, Rio 1992, to Kyoto Protocol 1997, to Copenhagen 2009, and Rio +20. The role of Tourism for sustainable development was only acknowledged after Rio 1992, with recommendations for the tourism industry to adopt the Agenda 21 principles. The first international conference on Climate Change and Tourism took place in Djerba 2003 and a second followed in Davos 2007. Chapter 2 deals with social representations (‘everyday theories’) or perceptions of climate change and finds that climate change remains an unfamiliar concept for many tourists, while the emphasis in discussions of sustainable tourism is still on changing rather than cutting consumption. Chapter 3 researches Australian SMEs and did not find a strong consumer commitment to travelling green, but noted that evaluation, accreditation, public relations and collaborative partnerships are considered important for sustainable innovations. Chapter 4 involves a qualitative research and in-depth interviews with executives of major Hawaii tourism entreprises and found a slow uptake of mitigation and adaptation strategies. In Chapter 5 the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme Director presents UNESCO Biosphere Reserves in an expectedly positive manner and touches on greening opportunities for tourism within the reserves including income generation via carbon offsets from business partners and visitors. Chapter 6 finds that climate change will probably benefit the South-West of England, already Britain’s foremost holiday destination, by improving weather conditions during the summer and shoulder seasons but may also bring extreme weather incidents. Chapter 7 argues that governments in Australia and New Zealand were indecisive until at least 2007, in the case of Australia also due to the climate sceptical position of the prime-minister.


Chapter 8, among the most valuable chapters, discusses the results of 3 surveys conducted by the authors: 350 tourism entreprises in Lake District National Park in UK (2001) 214 rural entreprises in Scotland (2005) and a mixed group (rural and urban) in 2011. Comparatively few of these entreprises (12% in 2001, 25%  in 2006 and 19% in 2011) have developed an environmental policy while cynicism and ambivalence about green ideas are common. The authors think that further green steps can only be accomplished through regulation rather than on a voluntary basis, but also find the likelihood of such regulations being introduced as very low due to the influence of powerful professional tourism associations. Chapter 9 argues that the current global tourism growth and resulting air transport emissions are at odds with global emission reduction targets unless carbon-neutral fuels replace current ones. Based on a sample of long-term surveys, the authors derive that relying on carbon pricing will not curb emissions but that a closed carbon trading scheme for aviation could force through some progress. Chapter 10 investigates the possible reaction of tourists to the potential impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) mainly coral death (bleaching) from rising sea surface temperature with ensuing reef ecosystem decline but also acidification, increased storms, rising sea levels, terrestrial runoff. Comparative visitor surveys in a pristine and a damaged GBR location found that truthful promotion and the presence of sufficient fish and marine animals can compensate for damaged coral. Chapter 11 deals with 6 small island developing states (SIDS) in the pacific where climate change is their most important threat (mainly due to sea level rise) while tourism is their major employer and still growing rapidly despite the global economic downturn. The not so surprising findings are that pacific SIDS have a long and uncertain way to go in terms of climate-change adaptation. Chapter 12 plays various climate change scenarios in coastal northeast Brazil and their impact on tourism flows through changes in sea level reduction of river flows, loss of coastline and salinization. Chapter 13 discusses how little climate change has so far influenced the tourism development strategies of Finland and other Nordic countries. Chapter 14 includes a case study in Kgalagadi (“Land of the Thirst”) and Okavango Delta in Botswana where operators were not only aware of the impacts of climate change but many believed that they were already witnessing them in the form of higher temperature and vegetation loss. Some respondents were focusing on maintaining tourists comfort through - ironically - the use of air-conditioning. Chapter 15 examines if and how an individual’s concern about climate change manifests in different tourism behaviour. It involved 30 open-ended, semi-structured interviews with tourist consumers (mostly academics) in UK and Norway in 2008 and based on the replies focuses on possible ‘inconsistencies’ between everyday life and travel, including one’s unwillingness to offset air flights or avoiding long-haul flights altogether. The book, is on the other hand consistent, as it is printed on ‘paper from responsible sources’ and should find its position on university library shelves. Chapters are well written avoiding jargon, provide detailed bibliography and quite a few tables and graphs.


The questions remain, will any dinosaurs of big tourism (and aviation) manage to evolve into small birds so as to survive the impact of the Climate Change "asteroid", if that does occur? Or, rather than waiting, could we perhaps divert the course of the CC asteroid by getting rid of such dinosaurs and their equivalents in other sectors?