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range of issues facing tourism, as well as certain of the related opportunities that derive from
sustainable tourism. These challenges include:
1.
Managing the dynamic growth of tourism while maintaining sustainability
2.
Poverty alleviation: meeting tourism's commitment to contribute to the UN's foremost
millennium goal of halving world poverty by 2015
4
3.
Maintaining support for conservation
4.
Ensuring the health, safety, and security of tourists
5.
Addressing the effects of climate change
Each and every one of the
five challenges will require great insight and effort to address them, but it
is the
final one on our list, namely
, that appears to currently be most pressing. As
such, we shall now examine it in some detail and in depth.
climate change
The New Realities Facing Tourism in an Era of Global
Climate Change
5
Compelling evidence indicates that global climate has changed compared to the pre-industrial era
—
and that it is anticipated to continue to change over the 21st century and beyond. The Inter-
governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared that
''
[...]warming of the climate system is
unequivocal.
F from 2001 to 2005 just
as it did between 1850 and 1899—the same increase in temperature, but in a much shorter number of
years, and the IPCC concluded that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since
the mid-twentieth century is very likely (
''
The global mean temperature increased approximately 0.76
̊
90% probability) the result of human activities that are
increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Discernible human in
uences now also
extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures,
temperature extremes, and wind patterns. Widespread decreases in glaciers and ice caps and warming
ocean surface temperature have contributed to sea level rise of 1.8 mm (.071 inches) per year from
1961 to 2003, and approximately 3.1 mm (.122 inches) per year from 1993 to 2003. Thus, there has
been a signi
cant increase in sea level rise the last 10 years of the 42-year study period. The biological
response of ecosystems and individual species has been recorded on every continent.
With its close connections to the environment and climate itself, tourism is considered to be a
highly climate-sensitive economic sector similar to agriculture, insurance, energy, and transportation.
The regional manifestations of climate change will be highly relevant for tourism destinations and
tourists alike, requiring adaptation by all major tourism stakeholders. Indeed, climate change is not a
remote future event for tourism, as the varied impacts of a changing climate are becoming evident at
destinations around the world and climate change is already in
uencing decision making in the
tourism sector
>
whether it would be ski resorts or beach destinations.
At the same time, the tourism sector is a nonnegligible contributor to climate change through
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions derived especially from the transport and accommodation of tourists.
Tourism must seek to signi
cantly reduce these emissions in accordance with the international
community, which at the ''Vienna Climate Change Talks 2007'' recognized that global emissions of
GHG need to peak in the next 10 to15 years and then be reduced to very low levels, well below half of
levels in 2000 by mid-century.
6
The tourism sector cannot address the challenge of climate change in
isolation, but must do so within the context of the broader international sustainable development
agenda. The critical challenge before the global tourism sector is to develop a coherent policy strategy
that decouples the projected massive growth in tourism in the decades ahead from increased energy use
and GHG emissions, so as to allow tourism growth to simultaneously contribute to poverty alleviation
and play a major role in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
—
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