Heritage, heritage tourism and climate change

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly recognised as a major threat to the sustainability of tourism, including heritage tourism. Yet, despite growth in literature on climate change and heritage, there is little specific literature on the relationship between climate change and heritage tourism. The paper introduces a special issue on heritage tourism and climate change. It briefly outlines the future challenges of climate change before commenting on tourism's role in climate change and the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Using UNWTO tourism estimates, a tentative figure of half of all emissions of tourism could be ascribed to heritage-related tourism.

Keywords:

• heritage tourism
• climate change
• cultural heritage
• natural heritage
• emissions
• IPCC

Acknowledgements

The contribution of the anonymous referees to the success of this special issue is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes on contributor

C. Michael Hall is a Professor in the Department of Management, Marketing & Entrepreneurship, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and Docent in Geography, University of Oulu, Finland. He also holds positions at Linneaus University, Sweden, and University of Johannesberg, South Africa. Current heritage tourism research is focused on World Heritage experiences in international perspective.

ORCID

C. Michael Hall http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7734-4587