Reducing climate risk to Vanuatu destinations holistically

Abstract

Climate change has been identified as one of the biggest challenges of our time and the impacts of global warming are becoming increasingly notable and damaging. As a result, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges for drastic actions to address and mitigate climate risk. This is highly relevant for the tourism industry which has been identified as a sustainable development option and which provides important economic activity to destinations globally, including many small island developing states, such as Vanuatu. Yet, tourism is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, while at the same time contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions. For tourism to deliver on its development promise under a changing climate, climate risk to destinations and how it can be reduced needs to be better understood. To address this need, this thesis aims to understand what role tourism can play to reduce climate risk to the wider destination. The relevance of climate change is not new to the tourism literature, and there is evidence that tourism businesses are already coping with changes in their environment. Yet actions to address climate risk are often reactionary without the consideration of potential flow-on effects that may be created. This can be problematic, particularly in the South Pacific where tourism activity is highly integrated with local communities and the natural environment. For tourism to create benefits and reduce climate risk beyond the tourism businesses, the wider destination needs to be considered. However, our understanding of how different destination characteristics and elements link, interact, and change under increased climate risk and how flow-on effects between destination elements can themselves influence climate change remains limited. To address these gaps, this thesis applies general systems theory to advance our understanding of climate risk to destinations in Vanuatu, and to identify the systemic change that is required to collectively and holistically address climate change through tourism. A qualitative multi-stage research design was developed to first assess how academic, practical and political tourism and climate change knowledge is produced and how it can be enhanced to better inform the sector’s climate response. Following this literature review, the systems approach guides the development of the Vanuatu Tourism Adaptation System which identifies economic, socio-cultural, political, and environmental variables, how they interlink and thereby influencing climate risk to destinations in Vanuatu. Destination trade-offs are discussed and policy recommendations of how they may be reduced presented. Building on this systemic understanding of risk to Vanuatu destinations, the potential of Ecosystem-based Adaptation for tourism is empirically tested. Results highlight the potential this approach provides to reduce climate risk and contribute to destination well-being. A number of barriers to successful implementations were identified, and strategies presented of how to address those. To discuss the results and learnings of the empirical studies of this thesis, the concepts resilience and transformation, system characteristics linked to change, are critically reflected upon to develop seven leverage points for holistic climate risk reduction to Vanuatu destinations. Results of this thesis highlight the opportunity systems thinking provides to reduce climate risk to destinations. It can help enhance awareness, support collaboration to integrate projects and policies across sectors and inform the selection and implementation of climate risk reducing interventions in tourism. This thesis makes several significant theoretical and practical contributions. It contributes to our theoretical understanding of how tourism climate change knowledge is created, and to our systemic knowledge on climate risk to destinations. It thus advances systems approaches in tourism, including our understanding of destinations as social-ecological systems. Linking resilience to leverage points provides a novel way of assessing system change and provides insights into how to manage such change to reduce climate risk. In addition, this thesis provides practical recommendations for Vanuatu destinations relevant to decision makers at local, provincial and national level. It seeks to stimulate a different way of thinking about the means of tourism and how to address complex problems such as climate change more holistically.