Published on : Tuesday, April 1, 2014
The much-awaited hulk-of-a-report on Climate Change has just been released from United Nations scientific panel Intergovernmental Panel.
And it presents a calamitous picture on the state of our global climate and says that the most horrible is yet to come.
In different sections of this report, there are chapters and sections on how tourism is being affected globally due to climate change and the consequences for different regions and habitats in the coming years.
The report says coastal systems are mainly sensitive to three important drivers related to climate change: sea level, ocean temperature and ocean acidity.
Coastal systems and low-lying areas will ever more experience unfavorable impacts such as submergence, coastal flooding, and coastal erosion due to relative sea level rise.
Coastal tourism is the most important component of the global tourism industry. Over 60% of Europeans choose for beach holidays and beach tourism provides more than 80% of US tourism revenues.
Above 100 countries benefit from the recreational value provided by their coral reefs, which added US$11.5 billion to global tourism.
Until now, after observation major impacts on coastal tourism have occurred from direct impacts of excessive events on tourist infrastructure, indirect impacts of extreme events and temporary tourist-adverse perception after the occurrence of extreme events.
Latest observed climate change impacts on the Great Barrier Reef include coral bleaching in the summers and extreme events including floods and cyclones.
Many studies have been carried out on projecting tourism demand, in order to give some idea of climate change impact on coastal destinations, for example, in Europe, the Baltic region and beach tourism in the Mediterranean and in 51 countries worldwide.
The studies offer varying details although it is difficult to draw overarching conclusions on tourism demand for coastal destinations.
With increased temperature in mid-latitude countries and coupled with increased storms in tropical areas, tourist influx could reduce from mid-latitude countries to tropical coastal regions with large developing countries and small islands most affected.
As for upcoming impacts on coastal tourism, there is high confidence in the impacts of excessive events and sea level rise aggravating coastal erosion.
The presence of coastal tourism infrastructure will continue to worsen beach reduction and coastal ecosystems squeeze under rising sea levels. The costs of future climate change impacts on coastal tourism are huge.
Tags: coastal tourism
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