Costs and benefits of environmental change: tourism industry's responses in Arctic Finland

ABSTRACT

Recent research has focused on the impacts of environmental change to tourism. In particular, the perceived costs of climate change have been increasingly studied. However, the relationship between costs and benefits resulting from the changing environmental conditions for the industry has been less examined. This paper identifies the locally observed changes in the natural and socio-economic environments and aims to analyse the financial costs and benefits to tourism businesses in two tourism-dependent communities in northern Finland. The specific focus is on adaptation and adaptive management in a tourist destination scale. Adaption is understood as an investment creating not only implementation costs, but potentially also benefits for tourism operations. Research materials were collected among tourism and tourism-related businesses through 41 semi-structured thematic interviews. Results indicate that the evaluated benefits of environmental change seem to exceed those of costs. This conforms to the on-going discourse of climate change–tourism relations associated with the Arctic region where both awareness and vulnerability to change are considered relatively high but the level of responses, i.e. adaptation, low. These results can help to further identify the most vulnerable sectors in tourism and assist entrepreneurs preparing for environmental and climate change. However, the paper concludes that while global environmental change, with specific adaptive management strategies, may create local short-term direct benefits for the industry, a long-term sustainability of tourism in the Arctic calls for mitigation responses to climate change.     

Micro-level assessment of regional and local disaster impacts in tourist destinations

ABSTRACT

The tourism sector faces severe challenges due to the economic impacts from changing natural environments as seen with the increased frequency of natural disasters. Therefore, analyses of disaster impacts models are necessary for managing successful tourism recovery. Typically, disaster assessments are conducted on a countrywide level, which can lead to imbalanced recovery processes, and a distorted distribution of recovery financing or subsidies. We address the challenges of recovery using the tourism disaster management framework by Faulkner. To calculate precise damage assessments, we develop a micro-level assessment model to analyze and understand disaster impacts at the micro-level supporting tourism recovery in an affected destination. We examine economic consequences of a disaster at a small regional scale arguing recovery from a natural disaster is more difficult in individual areas because of differences in geographic location or infrastructure development. The island of Dominica is chosen as an example for the model using statistical data from the tourism sector to outline and detail the consequences of a disaster specifically for communities. The results highlight the importance of damage assessments on a small-scale level, such as communities in order to distinguish between individual regions facing severe changes for resident livelihoods and the local tourism sector. We argue that only after identifying regional impacts it is possible to apply adequate governmental subsidies and development strategies for a country's tourism sector and residents in a continuously changing environment in the hopes of mitigating future financial losses and future climate change impacts.     

Special issue: managing and adapting to global change in tourism places

The focus of the articles in this special issue of Tourism Geographies is global change. Global change incorporates social and economic globalization, which is arguably the most important process to have shaped the development of modern tourism since the nineteenth century, and climate change, which is likely to be the most significant factor influencing human behavior and livelihood in the coming decades. The organization of these articles reflects a traditional geography approach, emphasizing the physical geography foundation of the human condition, especially through the issue of climate change. This is broadened by a series of insightful comparative studies of how communities relate to their changing natural and social environments through tourism.     

Enclaves in tourism: producing and governing exclusive spaces for tourism

Abstract

Exclusively planned tourism destinations, such as all-inclusive resorts, gated resort communities, private cruise liner-owned islands and privatized beaches, have increased over the last few decades. Researchers have analyzed these kinds of tourism environments as enclaves, which are typically driven by external forces and actors, strongly supported by globalization and the current neoliberal market economy. Existing research shows that tourism enclaves are characterized by active border-making, power issues and material and/or symbolic separation from the surrounding socio-cultural realities, leading to weak linkages with host communities and the local economy. Tourism enclaves involve power inequalities, injustices and unsustainable practices that often have serious negative impacts on local socio-economic development. The articles of the special issue focus on tourism enclaves in different theoretical and geographical contexts and they contribute to our understanding of how these exclusive spaces are created and transformed and how they shape places and place identities. The individual research articles are contextualized and discussed with the key theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on tourism enclaves. Future research needs include analysis of linkages and flows of labor, goods, ideas and capital in different scales; policymaking, planning and regulations; environmental impacts; and locals’ land and resource access in the respect of bordering, privatization and land grabbing. By focusing on these topics, the tourism industry could be guided towards more responsible and sustainable development path.     

Lessons from COVID-19 can prepare global tourism for the economic transformation needed to combat climate change

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the cessation of almost all international travel in the first half of 2020. A return to pre-pandemic growth patterns will take time and depend on the depth and extent of the recession sparked by COVID-19. The recovery phase will overlap with global efforts to deal with the evolving climate crisis. For the tourism industry to thrive in a future world it must look beyond the temptation of adopting strategies based on a return to the pre-COVID-19 normal of the past and instead seek to understand how it should respond to the emerging transformation of the global economy to carbon neutrality. Many of the lessons that emerged from the pandemic can be applied to strategies to deal with climate change. Of most interest is the success of strategies such as “flattening the curve”. Application of similar strategies plus adoption of the circular economy model to wind back Green House Gas emissions will help avert the global environmental disaster that will occur if global temperatures continue to increase. These strategies point to what a future carbon-neutral economic production system might look like, the path to which could offer the tourism industry numerous opportunities to transform from the current model that favours a high resource consumption model to one that is environmentally friendly and resource neutral.     

Hurricane impacts on southeastern United States coastal national park visitation

As a major contributor to local economies, the tourism industry has been greatly impacted by natural disasters. This study demonstrates the association between tourism economies and impacts of hurricanes in the southeastern United States containing coastal national parks, known for attracting a large number of tourists and having experienced hurricanes. In keeping with two longitudinal data methods (i.e. panel logit model and autoregressive integrated moving average), this study focused on the relationship between the (1) duration, intensity, and damage of hurricanes; (2) existing climate conditions; and (3) tourism demand on park visitation during hurricane and tourism seasons. As a whole, the impacts of hurricanes and climate conditions (precipitation, temperature) were found to have a negative effect on tourism demands (park visitation). With regard to the response of tourism economies to natural disaster damage, parks that experienced stronger natural disasters may be closed for a longer period in order to reconstruct facilities or natural/cultural resources damaged by storms. In an attempt to improve tourism-based regional economies, overcome the challenge of natural disasters on tourism economies, and increase opportunities for establishing disaster management, it is necessary to make an effort to allay unexpected damage to tourism-based areas through proactive plans for disaster mitigation activities.     

Human flourishing,tourism transformation and COVID-19: a conceptual touchstone

Abstract

As the planet remains in the grips of COVID-19 and amidst enforced lockdowns and restrictions, and possibly the most profound economic downturn since the Great Depression, the resounding enquiry asks—what will the new normal look like? And, in much the same way, tourism aficionados, policy makers and communities are asking a similar question—what will the tourism landscape, and indeed the world, look like after the pandemic? As casualties from the crisis continue to fall by the wayside, the rethinking about what an emergent tourism industry might resemble is on in earnest. Many are hopeful that this wake-up call event is an opportunity to reshape tourism into a model that is more sustainable, inclusive and caring of the many stakeholders that rely on it. And some indicators, though not all, point in that direction. In line with this, the concept of ‘human flourishing’ offers merits as an alternative touchstone for evaluating the impacts of tourism on host communities. Human flourishing has a long genesis and its contemporary manifestation, pushed by COVID-19 and applied to travel and tourism, further expands the bounds of its application. Human flourishing has the potential to offer more nuanced sets of approaches by which the impact of tourism on host communities might be measured. The challenge remaining is how to develop robust indices to calibrate human flourishing policy successes.     

Weather sensitivity and climate change perceptions of tourists: a segmentation analysis

ABSTRACT

Many communities rely on tourism spending, so it is important to understand any potential changes to tourist flows resulting from changing climate and weather patterns. However, tourists are not a homogenous group, as they have different motivations, values, and goals. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation is to better understand potentially varying perceptions and behavior of different tourist types, specifically in regards to their weather sensitivity, climate change concern, and behavioral intention for climate change mitigation. Tourists were randomly surveyed at 20 locations throughout the state of Maine in the United States (n = 704). Segmentation analysis on the activities tourists participated in yielded three segments of Maine tourists: non-nature-based tourists (50.6%), nature-based generalists (16.2%), and nature-based specialists (33.2%). Differences across segments were explored for perceptions of weather impacts, climate change concern, and mitigation intent. Additionally, weather sensitivity was analyzed based on type of overnight accommodations to better understand if this also had a role in differences. Non-nature-based tourists thought that weather variables were less influential during their travels in Maine than the other segments, while nature-based generalists perceived weather to have the highest influence. Additionally, nature-based specialists had the highest level of climate change belief, while nature-based generalists had the highest willingness to engage in climate change mitigation behavior. Results are useful to understand how segments of tourism demand may be altered with a changing climate, such as increased temperatures, precipitation, and storms, and what groups may be the most beneficial to target for marketing or educational efforts to reduce the impact of climate change.     

Post COVID-19 ecological and social reset: moving away from capitalist growth models towards tourism as Buen Vivir

Abstract

Tourism has been one of the industries most highly affected by COVID-19. The COVID-19 global pandemic is an ‘unprecedented crisis’ and has exposed the pitfalls of a hyper consumption model of economic growth and development. The scale of immediate economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has shattered the myth of ‘catch up development’ and ‘perpetual growth’. The Crisis has brought unintended degrowth, presenting opportunities for an economic and social ‘reset’. In terms of long-term thinking post COVID-19, it is time to change the parameters of how we imagine a trajectory going forward, to prefigure possibilities for contesting capitalist imperatives that ‘there is no alternative’. In relation to tourism, the pandemic provides an opportunity for reimaging tourism otherwise, away from exploitative models that disregard people, places, and the natural environment, and towards a tourism that has positive impacts. Non-western alternatives to neo-colonial and neoliberal capitalism, such the South American concept of ‘Buen Vivir’, can help us to shift priorities away from economic growth, towards greater social and environmental wellbeing, and meaningful human connections. Taking a Buen Vivir approach to tourism will continue the degrowth momentum, for transformative change in society within the earth’s physical limits. Yet Buen Vivir also redefines the parameters of how we understand ‘limits’. In limiting unsustainable practices in development and tourism, a focus on Buen Vivir actually creates growth in other areas, such as social and environmental wellbeing, and meaningful human connection. Buen Vivir can reorient the tourism industry towards localised tourism, and slow tourism because the principles of Buen Vivir require these alternatives to be small-scale, local and benefiting host communities as well as tourists to increase the wellbeing for all.     

Perceptions of tourism impacts and community resilience to natural disasters

Evidence since at least the 1990s suggests that global climate patterns have undergone dramatic changes, often resulting in weather-induced natural disasters that have caused widespread environmental damage. Such conditions raise serious threats to communities that are dependent on natural resources and ecosystem services for tourism development. Communities located in high-risk disaster regions face greater challenges in developing a tourism economy that is both resilient and sustainable. Residents in these communities live with a constant awareness of external threats and try to build a degree of resilience that includes traditional disaster prevention measures and a long history of post-disaster reconstruction. It is necessary to understanding the relationships between tourism and community resilience to address planning and development goals in an era of increasing climate uncertainty.

Three communities are examined that are regularly exposed to the threats of typhoons and flooding and are located within National Scenic Areas in Taiwan. In-depth interviews with community leaders and surveys of residents were undertaken. Residents with high potential to experience natural disasters generally have high degrees of awareness of various forms of tourism impacts. Their perceptions of tourism impacts are positively correlated with community resilience. The strongest relationships are between a perception of the positive economic impacts from tourism and the local capacity for undertaking adaptive responses; and between an awareness of the environmental impacts of tourism and the perceived fragility of their environment. Empowering community resilience usually requires long-term capacity building and is correlated with all three types of perceived tourism impacts. Deconstruction of the special experiences of disaster-prone tourism destinations provides a more nuanced insight into the relationships between community knowledge and awareness of resilience needs and the role and impacts of tourism. This, in turn, facilitates understanding of community tourism development in the face of contemporary changes in weather and climate.     

Identification of limits and barriers to climate change adaptation: case study of two islands in Torres Strait,Australia

Communities living on remote islands are often viewed as among the most exposed and vulnerable to climate change impacts. This study uses the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework to investigate how indigenous communities living on two physically different islands in Torres Strait, Australia, experience what they consider to be the impacts of climate change in relation to their daily lives. During this process, a series of natural, physical, and socio‐cultural limits and barriers to climate change adaptation were identified on Boigu, a low‐lying mud island inundated by the sea during high tides and storm surges. As a volcanic island, Erub's elevation is higher but significant community infrastructure, housing, and cultural sites are located on the low coastal fringe. No immediate limits to climate change adaptation were identified on Erub, but physical and socio‐cultural barriers were revealed. Limits to climate change adaptation occur when adaptation actions fail to protect the things valued by those affected, or few adaptation options are available. Barriers to climate change adaptation may be overcome if recognised and addressed but can become entrenched limits if they are ignored. Within the participating communities, such limits and barriers included (a) restricted adaptation options due to limited access to particular livelihood assets; (b) difficulty engaging with government processes to secure external support; and (c) people's place‐based values, which evoke a reluctance to relocate or retreat.     

旅游气候研究进展与启示

气候是旅游发展的重要因子。近年来,局部地区恶劣气候频繁出现,旅游业发展受到影响。总结国内外旅游气候研究进展,国外研究主要集中于旅游目的地气候条件对旅游业发展、旅游者行为的影响和人类旅游活动对气候的现实和潜在的影响;国内研究则集中在气候旅游资源和旅游地气候舒适度两方面。总的看来,国内外旅游气候研究的中心议题都围绕着气候是旅游业的影响要素,主要贡献有气候是包括自然旅游资源在内的资源形成背景;特殊的气象景观和优良的气候条件是旅游地重要吸引物,进而影响到旅游者决策行为,因此气候调查和分析应视为旅游规划的前提。     

The Green Economy Research Centre – positioning geographical research in Aberdeen to address the challenges of green economy transitions

ABSTRACT

The necessity to address climate change has resulted in a widespread debate about the need for a transition to a ‘greener’ economy. How such an economy emerges, by what drivers and at what scale is a significant source of speculation amongst the geographical research community. In the context of longstanding contributions to environmental geography from scholars working at Aberdeen University, this paper outlines a novel research agenda for the Green Economy Research Centre (GERC). The contours of the green economy are examined in the context of economic sectors of food production, tourism, energy and the blue economy. Cross-cutting themes of green transitions, governance, people and place and ecosystem services inform our academic contribution to this evolving and controversial societal issue.     

Recent Major Themes and Research Areas in the Study of Human-Environment Interaction in Prehistory

ABSTRACT

We report a study in which we systematically reviewed the recent literature dealing with human-environment interaction in prehistory. We first identified the 165 most highly cited papers published between 2005 and 2015. We then identified the major research themes covered in the sample of papers and assessed whether the themes fall into clusters and/or vary greatly in popularity. Subsequently, we identified potentially important lacunae. Our review identified dozens of themes and four major clusters: 1) improving our reconstructions of past environments; 2) the impact of climate change on past human societies; 3) human adaptation to past environmental conditions; and 4) human impacts on past environments. We also identified several gaps that led us to make a number of suggestions for future work. One is to pay more attention to the epistemology of causality. A second is to take into account nonlinearity when considering causal relationships. A third is to study the impact of chronological uncertainty on analyses. Lastly, our review revealed that there are differences between the aspects of human-environment interaction in prehistory that interest scholars and those that interest policy-makers and the general public. This needs to be addressed for obvious reasons.     

旅游业发展趋势与面临压力:2012-2050

国内大学的旅游研究已有30余载,1980年代没有因特网和信息技术影响,那时可否推测2012年的旅游业动态呢?2012—2050年旅游发展态势又将如何?本文首先确定经济、人口、年龄分布、气候等旅游发展动力。然后根据Yeoman教授提出的"旅游前景"设想,以资源多少和政治合作对抗两个动力维度构成矩阵,引用其"生态天堂"单元提出启示。最后预测新技术推动未来旅游更快、更大规模地发展,但会受制于多种压力,环境保护需求凸显。新旅游将基于新技术操纵人们感受的模式,并在新兴的大型城市间进行。旅游学者则要在更广阔的社会技术场景和城市规划中来研究旅游。     

‘Nature makes people happy,that’s what it sort of means:’ children’s definitions and perceptions of nature in rural Northwestern Ontario

ABSTRACT

Nature exposure positively impacts children’s physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive health and development. We know less about how children perceive their connection with nature and what nature means to them. This study uses focus groups to understand how rural Canadian children define, experience, and perceive benefits of nature. Using thematic analysis, we identified three primary themes. First, while children associate nature with specific activities, natural elements, and locations, they also conceptualize nature as ‘a whole community.’ Second, children experienced nature through doing, highlighting how activities connected them with nature while recognizing constraints on those engagements. Finally, children demonstrated agency in accessing nature to improve their emotional states. These findings indicate that from children’s views, nature is more than just space with natural elements. Children are also knowledgeable about the health benefits of nature, and capitalize on this knowledge. These findings can inform interventions to increase children’s interactions with outdoor environments.     

Planning for Climate Change Adaptation in a Multi-level Context: The Gothenburg Metropolitan Area

Individual local governments are key players in Sweden's strategy for climate adaptation but their authority does not match the scale of climate change and its impacts. Competences are divided among local, regional and national authorities. Climate adaptation thus requires cooperation, particularly in metropolitan regions. This raises issues of coordination, legitimacy and effectiveness of adaptation measures recommended in local Master Plans. The focus here is on how the 13 municipalities in the Gothenburg Metropolitan Area—expected to be the part of Sweden most affected by impacts of climate change—address and act upon issues of climate change adaptation within the framework of Sweden's Planning and Building Act, which places responsibility for the “common interest” of climate adaptation with local governments. Analysing municipal Master Plans, as well as the comments on these plans from the regional County Administrative Board and from Göteborg Region Association of Local Authorities, the inter-municipal association charged with infrastructural planning, I identify patterns in terms of coordination, legitimacy and effectiveness of planning for climate change adaptation. Results are discussed in relation to propositions from recent research on planning for climate adaptation in multi-level contexts.     

Ecological grief generates desire for environmental healing in tourism after COVID-19

Abstract

Tourism research is starting to take interest in the psychology of environmental distress, particularly as it relates to climate change. For both the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and the climate change movement that dominated international media in 2019, psychological parallels exist in terms of our experience of loss. As the world grapples with the pandemic and tourism grinds to a halt, stories on social media are surfacing that claim wildlife is returning to quarantined cities and that the Earth is healing itself. Much of the implicit critique of these stories is directed at the tourism industry, with two viral posts in particular supposedly documenting the ‘rewilding’ of Venice, that infamous icon of overtourism. While the popular media have been concerned primarily with the factual accuracy of these claims, what has gone largely unexplored is the apparent desire for environmental reparation that they express. The fixation on environmental healing evidenced in tourist social media can be interpreted as a response to widely-felt ‘ecological grief’, triggered by the events of COVID-19. In this context, animal reclamation of urban spaces can be identified as a motif of environmental hope that symbolises life, regeneration and resilience, the understanding of which may contribute to the project of hopeful tourism in the post-COVID-19 era.     

The political economy of dive tourism: precarity at the periphery in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Using a critical political economy approach and the concept of labour precarity, the international dive tourism industry in Sabah, Malaysia and its workers’ vulnerabilities are interrogated. Fieldwork data highlights dive tourism's socio-economic impacts and the precarity of labour within the international tourism sector and also critiques it as a development strategy for a peripheral region. The paper challenges the optimistic views of labour precarity found in the existing political economy literature. Rather than identifying labour empowerment, evidence demonstrates significant worker vulnerability, uncertainty, and contingency – especially among ethnic minorities – resulting from Malaysia's state-led rentier economy.     

The ‘natures’ of planning: evolving conceptualizations of nature as expressed in urban planning theory and practice

Over the course of the past century, the idea of nature in the city has become increasingly intricate, evolving from being viewed as a refuge separate from the city to being understood as an essential component of dynamic urban systems. As such, attempts are currently being made to ‘re-nature’ cities to support local and global ecosystems, increase human well-being and address environmental issues such as climate change. While the literature has examined changing assumptions about society–nature relationships in planning, a dearth of knowledge exists relating to the changing conceptualization of nature’s relationship with the ‘city’ and how this has influenced how urban planning with respect to ‘nature’ has evolved in both theory ‘and’ practice. In this paper, we address this lacuna by tracing the history of the entwined relationship between nature and city planning. The conceptual framework developed from this review is subsequently employed as an analytical lens through which to investigate an illustrative case study of planning for nature in Dublin City, Ireland. The paper concludes by reflecting on how exploring the natures of planning provides scope for greater critical attention to what we do as planners when we seek to address the challenge of safeguarding nature through policy.