Tourism and Climate Change: Risks and Opportunities

This book discusses the tourism-climate system and provides a sound basis for those interested in tourism management and climate change mitigation, adaptation and policy. In the first three chapters, the book provides a general overview of the relationships between tourism and climate change and illustrates the complexity in four case studies that are relevant to the wide audience of tourism stakeholders. In the following seven chapters detailed discussion of the tourism and climate systems, greenhouse gas accounting for tourism, mitigation, climate risk management and comprehensive tourism-climate policies are provided. This book compiles and critically analyses the latest knowledge in this field of research and seeks to make it accessible to tourism practitioners and other stakeholders involved in tourism or climate change.

Susanne Becken is the Director of the Griffith Institute for Tourism (GIFT) and a Professor at Griffith University, Australia. She is also Adjunct Professor at Lincoln University, New Zealand. Her research interests include sustainable tourism, climate change, energy use and resource efficiency, resilience, and environmental policy. She has published widely in these areas and her most recent papers appear in the Journal of Travel Research, the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Annals of Tourism Research and Global Environmental Change.

Prof. John Hay has nearly forty years work experience in academia, the private sector and governmental organisations, with a focus on bringing an interdisciplinary approach to the environmental sciences, to technical and policy-relevant assessments and to professional training in environmental science, engineering, technology, law, policy and management. John has extensive international experience as a climate scientist, including acting as lead author in the latest three assessments conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Currently John works as a consultant and advisor to many national governments and regional and international organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Environment Programme. John is also the lead consultant in a UNWTO project on climate change and tourism in the Maldives.