Tourism destinations’ vulnerability to climate change: Nature-based tourism in Vava’u, the Kingdom of Tonga

Abstract

Tourism plays an important role in economic and human development in the Pacific. These benefits are at risk from the impacts of climate change, threatening the sustainability of the Pacific tourism sector. We assess the vulnerability and resilience of nature-based tourism in Vava’u, Tonga, using the Destination Sustainability Framework of Calgaro (2014) modified for a climate change focus. Our empirical assessment indicates that the following factors increase vulnerability levels in Vava’u: strong seasonality, dependency on air access, remoteness, limited connectivity of Vava’u from national decision makers and limited human and financial resources. Resilience levels in Vava’u are heightened by a high awareness of climate change, the resilient nature of Tongans and strong family and social networks. In conclusion, we recommend a set of adaptation strategies to further improve resilience levels, namely improving climate change education, increasing product and market diversification, strengthening institutional capacities and mainstreaming adaptation in national policies.

Climate adaptation within the tourism sector of a small island developing state: A case study from the coastal accommodations subsector in the Bahamas

“…Cultural capital was examined through the respondent's awareness regarding climate change and its perceived impacts on their businesses. The literature on other SIDS suggests that high awareness of climate change among the private sector contributes toward the adaptive capacity of the sector (Van Der Veeken et al, 2016). Most survey participants had some understanding of climate change.…”

“…Social networks were measured through formal associations, clubs, and societies that strengthen the social ties of an organization. Such associations bring different employees together, facilitate knowledge sharing and collective action in responding to climate change (Petzold & Ratter, 2015; Van Der Veeken et al, 2016; Warrick et al, 2017) Six out of 10 interviewees stated that there were formal societies for their establishment employees. As these differ among different departments and employees, owners/managers were not able to provide detailed information regarding the nature of these associations.…”

“…Similar to Brown et al (2018), we analyzed the adaptive capacity of the tourism system by developing specific indicators based on the five generic capitals—human, natural, social, institutional, and financial— that most closely fits the SIDS' context. Table 2 provides a list of the indicators that are most relevant to tourism in SIDS (Parsons et al, 2018; Petzold & Ratter, 2015; Van Der Veeken et al, 2016) and that helped develop our contextualized survey questions. In contrast to focusing on specific disasters, we chose the indicators that measure broader climatic changes and contribute to the long‐term resilience of many SIDS.…”

“…Coastal tourism in these Caribbean SIDS is extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts such as sea level rise (Scott, Simpson, & Sim, 2012) and storm surge (Moore, Harewood, & Grosvenor, 2010). Given their vulnerability, a resilience discourse has been present in SIDS which has recently extended to their tourism sector as well (Becken, 2013; Holmes, 2017; Van Der Veeken et al, 2016). A resilience‐based lens can potentially enlarge the scope of adaptation to broader societal goals by including livelihood diversification and community development in addition to the short‐term impacts of climate change (Engle, de Bremond, Malone, & Moss, 2014).…”

Effects of changes in climate and land cover on Tanzanian nature-based tourism in national parks : How are tourist attractions affected?

“…GCMs) show that the mean daily temperature in Tanzania could rise by 3 o C to 5 o C by 2075 (Agrawala et al, 2003). In general, changes in climate and its variability are increasingly threatening NBT by limiting some tourism activities and affecting attractions, such as changing wildlife migration patterns and reducing snow availability (Scott, 2006;Scott et al, 2008;van der Veeken et al, 2016;. Changes in climate, climate variability and extreme weather events aggravate other environmental impacts.…”