Details
- Publication date
- 1 June 2014
Description
| The tourism industry is one of the world’s largest, accounting for some 9% of global GDP and generating more than US Dollar (USD) 6 trillion in revenue each year. It provides livelihoods to more than 255 million people worldwide. The sector is particularly important for some of the world’s poorest countries, especially some Small Island States. The industry faces profound impacts from climate change – impacts that are already being felt. As temperatures rise, the attractiveness of many destinations will fade. Winter sports will become less viable in some locations. Coastal tourism is highly vulnerable to rising sea levels. The natural phenomena that millions of tourists travel to see – coral reefs, forests, fauna-rich savannah – will be degraded or destroyed. The sector also faces impacts of a more general nature: more expensive insurance (from more extreme weather), reduced water availability, reduced food security and greater conflict affecting some communities in which it operates. There are limited positive effects from climate change. Changing temperatures will make new regions more attractive to some tourists, and there will be some opportunities for new types of tourism. And options exist to adapt to the effects of climate change. However, these new opportunities are likely to be short-lived, and adaptation options limited. Furthermore, many adaptation responses are likely to be overwhelmed by climate change later this century, especially under high GHG emission scenarios. Tourism will be affected by policy changes and efforts to reduce GHG emissions causing global warming, especially in the context of the steep growth in its emissions. Emissions from transport and the built environment account for 95% of tourism’s emissions, meaning that reductions from those two sectors will dictate much of its mitigation potential. |
Files
Climate Change: Implications for Tourism