ABSTRACT
Sustainability in the context of tourism has been of interest to researchers for several decades whereas climate change in relation to tourism has been debated largely only since the late 1990s (although some sources prior to this period exist). Generally, sustainability issues are given relatively less focus when the two most recent decades are compared, and the need for clearer and stronger inclusion within the current climate change discussion has been highlighted. Climate change issues have been largely given focus in the tourism literature since 2000, though more adaptation and mitigation measures are needed to reduce the contribution of the tourism industry to emissions, estimated to be from 5 to 14 per cent of emissions if measured as radioactive forcing (Simpson et al. 2008). Increased coverage of climate change topics is evident not only in tourism but also in research related to mainstream environment and natural resources. For example, out of the 1,961 World Bank projects with an ‘environment and natural resources management’ theme, the percentage of projects with a pollution and environmental health theme has remained flat or declined, whereas the percentage of projects with sub-themes of biodiversity and/or climate change have recorded a threefold increase (10 per cent to almost 30 per cent) between 1983 and 2008 (Tallis et al. 2008). Several of the recent international conferences encourage researchers, planners and policy makers to approach and tackle sustainability and climate change aspects together.
