Tourism and climate change: socio-cultural aspects

Peter Burns, University of Brighton

Lyn Bibbings, Oxford Brookes University (members of e-clat)

International Tourist arrivals 1950-2020 (UNWTO )

Snow and ice disappearing: Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, 1993 and 2000

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=10856

…the Carteret Islands, 100 km north east of Bougainville, having heard that they were suffering badly from rising seas caused by global warming. All 6 of the islands in the group are being badly damaged and the islands look like making history as the first atoll to be abandoned due to rising seas. Food crops have been destroyed, houses have been washed away and malaria is now the most common cause of children dying… (Pip Starr 2006)

Ski Dubai: …It's basically a huge refrigerated metal tube that pokes out of the roof of a shopping mall, chilled by 23 blast coolers. It's weird pulling on ski boots, clumping up an escalator and stepping into snow and freezing air while outside in the desert it's 40C in the shade.. (http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2006/05/24/ski_pg8.jpg)

These spindly threads of condensation may not seem important but some persist for hours and behave in the same way as high altitude cirrus clouds, trapping warmth in the atmosphere and exacerbating global warming.(www.sciencedaily.com/.../ 02/050204213009.htm 2005) Image: http://www.eos-chaos.com/images/20051130083814_look%20daddy.jpg)

changes in tourism

• Massive post-war growth in leisure travel• Tourism decision making does not follow

rational decision models• Search for ‘authenticity’, inspiration,

rejuvenation• Tourism mobility as a social desire• ‘Democratised’ travel• Importance of tourism as development

change in society• Demographics

– developed vs. developing worlds– aging population/ baby boomers– Fragmented and single family units– Shift to urban living (2007 crossed the 50%

threshold)• Culture of mobility• “liquid modernity”• Consumptive lifestyles (but ‘new puritans’?)• This is a mainly middle class debate

The future

Change can only come about through a partnership between supplier & consumer governed by a regulatory framework that provides clear guidelines for stakeholders

and a level playing field for businesses: the resulting sets of interactions are cultural

phenomena