Climate Change and Tourism - UNEP - Division of Technology ...

178 Climate Change and Tourism – Responding to Global Challenges
world tourism in number of trips or guest nights. Achieving this desirable alternative scenario will not be
easy and concerted action by the entire tourism sector must commence in the very near term.
Climate change mitigation policies within tourism will have to find a balance between potentially
conflicting objectives. Clearly, decisions on climate change and tourism have implications for local,
national and global, as well as inter-generational equity and all these aspects need to be taken into
account to arrive at an effective policy mix. For example, the most effective mitigation option for tourism
would be to reduce the growth in the demand for flying (e.g., by increasing taxation and/or including the
aviation sector in emissions trading schemes). However, such policy options must be weighed carefully
against the other socio-economic benefits of tourism, including the needs of developing countries in
terms of poverty alleviation and other Millennium Development Goals, and the support of protected
areas and biodiversity, especially because long-haul travel from the industrialized countries causes most
emissions, while only a minor share of this long-haul travel is directed to poor regions.
“If we were to turn a switch off tomorrow to the travel industry, far from saving the planet, we
would be causing wholesale extinction of species. We would be losing vast areas of wilderness
around the planet. […] there would be no (economic) justification to protect it.”
UNWTO, 9 July 2008
Costas Christ, Senior Director for Ecotourism, Conservation International 739
13.5 Knowledge Gaps and Research Needs
Clearly, this state of knowledge report is not an end product; it is a snapshot of the state of knowledge
in a rapidly evolving field of research and policy development. A number of important knowledge gaps
have been identified throughout this report. There is a need to improve the knowledge base about the
use of weather and climate information in the tourism sector, and specifically ensure the availability
of weather data to support the regionally specific decision-making needs of the tourism sector. While
our understanding of the impacts of climate change for various destination types has improved, there
remain major regional gaps in our knowledge of how climate change will affect the natural and cultural
resources critical for tourism in Africa, the Caribbean, South America, the Middle East and large parts
of East Asia (see Table 9.8 and Figure 9.16). The lack of common climate change impact indicators
in the tourism sector has hindered the comparison and synthesis of existing studies. Many analyses
of potential impacts at destinations have focused on a narrow range of impacts (e.g., natural snow
cover for skiing), but to understand the implications of climate change for a destination requires the
development of an integrated systems approach 740 that holistically considers four-season supply and
demand-side impacts and adaptation options. Climate change analogues are an important, but as yet
under-utilized, technique to assess the implications of climate change for destinations, when current
supply and demand-side adaptations are employed.
Understanding tourist climate preferences, the seasonal triggers for key tourism activities, and their
perceptions of the environmental impacts of global climate change at destinations remain important
knowledge gaps that need to be addressed to project more accurate potential long-range shifts in
tourism demand. In addition, our understanding of the relative importance of climate change vis-à-vis
other longer term market trends, as well as the interactions between these trends and climate change
remains very limited. To date the limited climate change research on the tourism and recreation sector
has examined the implications of a changed climate almost exclusively with the assumption that ‘all
else will remain equal.’ Knowing that ‘all will not remain equal’ over the next 20 to 80 years in any
economic sector, let alone the rapidly evolving tourism sector, future research must also consider how
climate change will interact with other major influencing variables in the tourism sector (globalization
and economic fluctuations, fuel prices, aging populations in industrialized countries, increasing travel
safety and health concerns, increased environmental and cultural awareness, advances in information
and transportation technology, environmental limitations – water supply and pollution). The interaction
of climate change impacts and other demographic and societal trends shaping tourism development
over the coming decades is a fruitful area of further inquiry. This calls for ambitious research on scenario
development for the tourism and travel sector.