Tourism and climate change: evaluating the extent of policy integration

Abstract

Climate change poses complex challenges and addressing these requires increasing integration across policy domains. This research developed a framework to assess policy integration between the tourism and climate change domains by examining coverage, scope, materiality and alignment. A database of 101 policy documents was compiled, representing 61 countries over 17 years. Only 37 documents covered the tourism-climate nexus substantially, suggesting climate change has not yet become a priority for tourism policy makers. Considering that tourism makes considerable contributions to and is substantially impacted by climate change, the observed gaps in tourism policy need to be addressed. The paper concludes with some minimum expectations for policy integration, including examples of good practice, and suggests that more effort is required to achieve climate change policy integration in tourism.

Keywords:

• Climate change
• policy
• integration
• government
• adaptation
• mitigation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susanne Becken

Prof Susanne Becken a Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University in Australia, and a VC Research Fellow at the University of Surrey, UK. She has published widely on sustainable tourism, climate change and tourism resource use. Susanne is a member of the Air New Zealand Sustainability Advisory Panel, PATA’s Sustainability and Social Responsibility committee, and the Whitsunday Climate Change Innovation Hub. Email: [email protected]

Emma Whittlesea

Dr Emma Whittlesea is a Principal Policy Officer for the Queensland Government and Senior Research Fellow with the Griffith Institute for Tourism. Her work supports the development and implementation of climate change policy and programs. Emma has developed strategic and practical tools and advice for the tourism industry, in England and Australia. Email: [email protected]

Johanna Loehr

Johanna Loehr is a Doctoral candidate at the Griffith Institute for Tourism, as well as an active sustainable tourism industry professional having completed projects for both government and the private sector. Her research interests are tourism and climate change, sustainable tourism, policy making and systems thinking. Her PhD focuses on destination wide climate change risk reduction in the South Pacific. Email: [email protected]

Daniel Scott

Prof Daniel Scott is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo and a Vice-Chancellor Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Surrey. He has published over 100 peer reviewed journal publications related to sustainable tourism, climate change adaptation, and decarbonisation. He also has been a contributing author and expert reviewer for four United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. Email: [email protected]