The Vanuatu Tourism Adaptation System: a holistic approach to reducing climate risk

Abstract

Tourist destinations in small island developing states are facing increasing risk from climate change, threatening not only tourism businesses but all destination elements including the community and ecosystems. In order to reduce climate risk destination wide, this paper first enhances the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change risk framework by extending it with destination specific features. This extended framework was drawn upon to develop a system model for Vanuatu, called the Vanuatu Tourism Adaptation System, using a qualitative multi-phase research design. The system highlights economic, socio-cultural, political, and environmental variables, how they are interlinked and thereby influence climate risk to destinations in Vanuatu. It provides a novel tool for understanding climate risk reduction within destinations as a holistic system and based on this understanding, destination trade-offs and policy recommendations are discussed. It can thus aid tourism and climate change decision makers in identifying and testing adaptation measures that benefit not only tourism but the destination more broadly, including the local community and ecosystem health. This study fills a gap in the academic literature by enhancing the systemic understanding of climate risk in small island developing states destinations and contributes to our understanding of tourism as a climate-resilient development pathway.

Keywords:

• Climate risk
• destination
• systems thinking
• climate adaptation
• Vanuatu

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof Susanne Becken, Prof Brendan Mackey and Dr Johanna Nalau for their support conducting this research and their very helpful feedback, as well as the three independent reviewers for their comments. I would also like to thank all participants and Ni-Vanuatu research assistant for their time and contribution to this study. The field work was supported by a grant from a private charitable trust that wishes to remain anonymous to avoid unsolicited funding proposals. The donor had no influence on any aspect of the research reported here.

Disclosure statement

The Author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 Supplementary material on the methodology developing the Vanuatu TAS, including the list of policies and academic literature used to inform the identification of variables can be accessed here: https://www.terranova.org.au/repository/the-vanuatu-tourism-adaptation-system-2013-supplementary-material/the-tourism-adaptation-system-2013-supplementary.pdf/view

Additional information

Funding

Field work was supported by a grant from a private charitable trust.

Notes on contributors

Johanna Loehr

Johanna Loehr is a PhD candidate at the Griffith Institute for Tourism and Department of Tourism, Sport & Hotel Management, Griffith University, as well as a sustainability tourism industry professional. Her research interests are tourism and climate change, sustainable tourism and systems thinking.