Tourism and Climate Change: Risks and Opportunities

Abstract

Timely, ambitious, but rather uncritical and indigestible. There is now about a decade’s research on tourism and climate change, so a review monograph is much needed. Reaction to climate change within the tourism industry itself also commenced at least a decade ago, as ski resorts scrambled to reposition themselves as mountain resort-residential developments, and airlines started to promote carbon offsets as a political counter to carbon taxes. Associated with this approach has been the calculation of carbon and energy footprints, and this is where Susanne Becken cut her teeth in this field, with a 2002 PhD at Lincoln University in New Zealand. John Hay, the other author of the current volume, is also based in NZ, where he runs a consulting company. Interestingly, a 2005 book on tourism and climate edited by two other New Zealand researchers is not cited: is this inter-university rivalry? It can’t be simply timing, because one chapter in that book is indeed mentioned.