The Climate Change Challenge - Implications for the Tourism Industry
The Icarus Foundation Discussion paper is now available - Download Icarus_Report_Final2.pdf
PLEASE join the discussion! Give us your comments, creative ideas and concerns here.
For those short on time, here is the
Executive Summary
This paper serves two objectives:
1. To summarize the key impacts of climate change on tourism as well as tourism’s contribution to global warming; and
2. To encourage the Canadian tourism industry to develop effective and sustainable responses which might minimize the negative impacts of this phenomenon.
The first part of the paper provides a lay person’s overview of the topic – those readers who feel comfortable with the science and projected impacts may skip this section.
The second part describes the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on tourism in general. We assert that failure to address the multiple risks associated with climate change – be they physical, regulatory, financial, reputational or operational – will undermine Canada’s competitive position. Furthermore, failure to grasp how the indirect effects of climate change (i.e., rising energy costs, changing consumer demand, security issues, regulatory responses etc.) might also impede tourism’s growth and progress and could furthermore undermine its sustainability.
The third part of the paper looks at the kinds of actions that need to be contemplated if the tourism community is to play its part in responding effectively to climate change. While actions designed to mitigate and or adapt to the risks associated with climate change are now occurring in several provinces, territories, and communities, the tourism sector, as a whole, has not yet articulated any robust and collective strategies for either reducing tourism’s ecological or carbon footprint or adapting to a very different social and regulatory environment that is emerging within society at large.
Even though the term sustainable has been in widespread use for over twenty years, the evidence suggests that both tourism in particular, and human economies in general, are not living within their ecological means. The tourism sector has not been required to internalize the external costs associated with its use of natural resources i.e. the provision of clean air and water, the elimination or safe absorption of greenhouse gases, and maintenance of natural ecosystems and pristine landscapes. The rapid warming of earth’s average temperature, that will undermine tourism activity in many locations, combined with growing evidence of ecological collapse, suggest that this imbalance needs to be corrected.
Climate change provides us with an opportunity to generate tangible and truly sustainable solutions to what is, in reality, an even broader environmental, social and political challenge. The immediacy, urgency and unambiguous nature of the threat is real. It can be measured. Targets can be set and progress monitored. Effective responses will involve collaboratively developing a complex range of fiscal, regulatory, cultural and behavioral mechanisms that, if applied, would take us a long way down the road to some form of sustainability. In other words, the better and more robust are our responses to climate change, the more likely we are to see a truly sustainable tourism sector emerge.
The Icarus Foundation proposes a number of action steps that need to take place at all levels – national, provincial/territorial and community-based as well as by individual tourism suppliers. These include:
1. Measuring the ecological and carbon footprint of tourism by region, sector and for each constituent parts so that baselines and realistic reduction targets can be set and reduction strategies devised;
2. Understanding the issues and impacts with rigor and honesty.
3. Committing to credible reduction and risk mitigation programs.
4. Realizing the opportunities and benefits that come from adjusting to a low carbon economy.
5. Re-thinking the kind of tourism we wish to develop that exists in better harmony and balance with the larger social and economic system of which it is a part. It is time to focus on the net value and benefit of tourism to all stakeholders and to focus on generating highest and best yields.
6. Undertaking further research into changing consumer values and behaviors; the impediments to behavioral change; alternative policy instruments, actions of competitors; as well as the business and market opportunities that a low carbon economy presents.
7. Helping the tourism industry adapt to the negative effects of a changing climate.
Finally, the Icarus Foundation lays down a challenge to the tourism community in Canada. We believe that there is an opportunity for tourism to show leadership by positioning itself as the stewards of the natural world that has been used so effectively to attract visitors. Canada could enjoy the same level of international recognition and respect it gained as peacekeepers, if it were to make a deep commitment to developing a robust, resilient low carbon economy that lived within its environmental means. Given that tourism is about helping people meet and engage with each other while experiencing personal renewal, why shouldn’t tourism be the lead change agent at this critical juncture in our human history? Canada’s tourism community – are you up for this exciting task?
Call to Action
Rather than create a new organization with associated overhead, we envisage the Icarus Foundation more as a virtual force that informs and shapes existing agencies. So we put these ideas out into the tourism community to stimulate discussion and, most importantly, ignite actions and share solutions.
We encourage any and every reader to circulate the paper freely and encourage all readers to:
a. send comments and join the debate here;
b. lobby their sector associations, destination marketing organizations and public sector agencies to put climate change high on their action agendas;
c. Suggest creative solutions for action and community-wide engagement; and
d. See themselves as potential change agents and leaders in their own community.
