Tourism isn't thinking much about climate change and that's a problem

Tourism is contributing to climate change, and it appears there’s not much being done by the industry to address it.

Only 21 percent of tourism policies in Australia referenced climate change, according to a paper published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

“What we found is that they’re not recognising that tourism contributes to climate change. They see it more of an issue they have to address, as opposed to something that tourism contributes to,” the paper’s co-author Char-lee Moyle from the Queensland University of Technology explained.

“So therefore they play more of a victim, and they look at adaptation strategies as opposed to mitigation.”

Moyle and a group of co-authors examined 477 government tourism policy and planning documents that were published over a 15-year period. Of those that did mention climate change, many only pay “lip-service” to the issue.

“Often some of the strategies [address climate change] in quite a generic way. Some of the strategies would say, climate change is an issue in a statement of threats to the industry. But they didn’t elaborate on that,” Moyle said.

Coral bleaching, Great Barrier Reef, Australia, satellite image. Colours show chlorophyll concentrations in the waters around Heron Island (centre), ranging from pink (low) through blue, turquoise, green and yellow to red (high). Coral reefs, seen as the offshore areas of green and yellow (centre and upper centre) expel their chlorophyll-containing algae when sea temperatures rise.

Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RM

The state of Queensland had a large proportion of detailed climate change strategies, although many were simple statements on the issue. New South Wales, curiously, had no mention of climate change in its tourism policies on a state level in the 15-year period.

Moyle and her co-authors weren’t able to discover why climate change issues had been omitted, or lacked such detail in these tourism policies. But we daresay politics might just have an effect on the importance of environmental issues.

In 2007, when the centre-left Labor government came into power in Australia, there was a spike in mentions and discussion of climate change in these policies, according to the paper.

“Often though it would not relate into action, they would just say it’s an issue. But it certainly became more prevalent,” Moyle added.

Moyle is also working on a study looking at international perceptions of the Great Barrier Reef and the phenomenon of “last chance tourism,” in which tourists travel to natural wonders which they fear will disappear soon.

This, even though it puts more strain on an already fragile destination in the short-term.