ABSTRACT
This chapter will consider how external global geopolitical and socio-cultural trends may influence cultural heritage tourism over the next four decades. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been a time of rapid global change. Numerous countries, states and organizations are attempting to make sense of how the world will develop over the coming decades. These perspectives include security (MOD, 2010; NIC, 2012), economy (Ward, 2011, 2012), energy provision (IEA, 2012) and climate change (NRC, 2011) to name but a few. With such a diversity of perspectives, these different organizations have elucidated different key megatrends for the future. For example, the National Intelligence Council in the US sees the four global megatrends as individual empowerment; the diffusion of power; demographic patterns; and the growing nexus among food, water and energy in combination with climate change (NIC, 2012). In contrast, the UK's Ministry of Defence see the key global drivers of change (what they term as the ‘Ring Road’ issues) as being globalization, climate change, global inequality and innovation (MOD, 2010).
