Sustainable tourism planning and climate change adaptation in the Alps: a case study of winter tourism in mountain communities in the Dolomites

ABSTRACT

A vast body of literature suggests that the European Alpine Region is extremely sensitive to climate change. Winter tourism is closely related to climate variations, especially in mountain regions where resorts are heavily dependent on snow. This paper explores how to effectively integrate a climate change adaptation perspective with local discourses about sustainability and tourism, an increasing priority for policy-makers in the region and elsewhere. It reports on the development and application of a participatory decision support process for the analysis of adaptation strategies for local development of an Alpine tourism destination, Auronzo di Cadore (Dolomites, Italy). This experience significantly contributed to the idea that an efficient combination of modelling capabilities, decision support tools, and participatory processes can substantially improve decision-making for sustainability. The authors show that, in this case study, such a combination of methods and tools allowed for managing the involvement of local actors, stimulating local debates on climate change adaptation and possible consequences on winter tourism, encouraging creativity and smoothing potential conflicts, and easing the integration of the qualitative knowledge and the preferences of the involved actors with quantitative information. This contributed to an integrated sustainability assessment of alternative strategies for sustainable tourism planning.

阿尔卑斯山脉的可持续旅游规划和气候变化适应：白云石山脉山区的冬季旅游案例研究

大量文献显示气候变化在欧洲阿尔卑斯山脉地区极其敏感，与冬季旅游特别是高度依靠降雪的山地旅游紧密相关。本文开发应用参与式决策支持过程，对奥龙佐迪卡多雷地区发展适应性方案进行分析，探究如何有效结合气候变化适应性理论和当地可持续发展及旅游的观点，证明结合建模能力、决策支援工具和参与过程可以大幅优化可持续发展的决策，研究方法和工具的结合使用可以达成数种好处，在完善可持续旅游规划替代方案评估方面有重要贡献。

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change adaptation
• winter tourism
• decision support
• participatory processes
• local development

关键字:

• 气候变化适应
• 冬季旅游
• 决策支持
• 参与过程
• 地区发展

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the colleagues who collaborated for the successful implementation of the research (Maurizio Dissegna, Isabella Pasutto, and Daria Moretto), and to the people we met in Auronzo di Cadore from whom we have learnt a great deal.

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In general, a ski resort is considered to be snow-reliable if, in 7 out of 10 winters, a sufficient snow covering of at least 30–50 cm is available for ski sport on at least 100 days between 1 December and 15 April (Burki, Abegg, & Elsasser, 2007).

2. The website of the EC Programme is http://www.alpine-space.eu.

3. The full title of the project is “Climate Change and its impact on tourism in the Alpine Space”. The project website is http://www.climalptour.eu.

4. The Alpine region spans the following countries: Slovenia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Monaco. The latter two countries did not participate in the ClimAlpTour project.

5. The new version of the mDSS software (mDSS5), originally conceived during the EU FP5 project MULINO (MULtisectoral, INtegrated and Operational Decision Support System for sustainable use of water resource at the catchment scale), can be downloaded from http://www.netsymod.eu/mdss.

6. AGNA for quantification of social indicators (http://www.oocities.org/imbenta/agna); Pajek primarily for visualisation of the social network (http://pajek.imfm.si/doku.php?id=download)

7. Scenarios are here considered as hypothetical sequences of events constructed with the purpose of focusing attention over causal processes and decision points in accordance with Eden and Ackermann (1998). Hence, a scenario represents a possible future with an explicit effort to understand the forces that shape it.

8. The development of visual representation of the cognitive map with the elements characterising the strategies was carried out by means of a specific piece of software (IHCM Cmap, downloadable at http://ftp.ihmc.us/) used also at the workshop for real-time annotation and sharing of the views of local actor. Spatial maps were developed in Google Earth, downloadable at http://www.google.com/earth/index.html.

9. For more information on the different decision rules provided by mDSS5, go to www.netsymod.eu/mdss.

10. AWS1.0 is an ad hoc model developed with local primary and secondary data that is able to simulate the tourism demand and supply side in Auronzo di Cadore in the coming decades, its heterogeneous elements, the behavioural rules and their change in space and time according to climate scenarios, expectations, trends, competition with other resorts, etc. (Balbi et al., 2013).

11. An erosion model based on the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation was developed in Simile, by Simulistcs, an object-oriented system dynamics modelling environment (www.simulistics.com).

12. By means of the Geographical Information System (GIS) Idrisi Taiga. The Idrisi Taiga website is http://www.clarklabs.org.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Veneto Region, lead partner of the ClimAlpTour project and by the Italian Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea.

Notes on contributors

Laura Bonzanigo

Laura Bonzanigo is a researcher at the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change (CMCC) and at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, and a PhD student at the University of Venice Ca' Foscari. Her research focuses on participatory processes for decision-making and (dynamic) models for sustainability assessment of natural resource management projects, and climate change adaptation in agricultural systems, with specific attention to water saving measures.

Carlo Giupponi

Carlo Giupponi is associate professor at the Department of Economics at Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italy). His research activity focuses on sustainability science, the integrated assessment and management of natural resources, exploring socio-ecosystems, water, agriculture, and global change. Specific methodological interests include (spatial, participatory) modelling and decision support systems. He is an affiliate scientist at the CMCC, and the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).

Stefano Balbi

Stefano Balbi is a post-doctoral researcher in sustainability science and economics focusing on agent-based modelling, ecological economics, and tourism economics. Work experiences include the UN Development Program as Energy and Environment Specialist, the European Commission Environment DG, and the Alpine Convention as country representative for the fourth report on the State of the Alps. He is involved in the ESPA (ASSETS) project developed around the ARIES modelling platform.