Climate change – a challenge for the travel and tourism industry.doc

Tourism Investigation Monitoring Team, October 2007 TOURISM FEELS THE HEAT OF GLOBAL WARMING By Anita Pleumarom The promoters of ‘adventure-’ or ‘ecotourism’ have popularized slogans such as: “Go visit the last paradises… before they’ll be destroyed by tourist hordes.” In a similar fashion, the British daily The Observer recently suggested that world travellers need to hurry up if they want to see the ‘10 wonders of a vanishing world’. According to the related article, the most wondrous natural tourist attractions we can no longer take for granted due to global warming include: Africa’s highest mountain - the spectacular Kilimanjaro in Tanzania will never look the same as snows are disappearing at an alarming rate. The Caribbean coral reefs – particularly the Meso-American reef, the worlds second biggest, stretching from the coast of southern Mexico down past Belize and into Honduras, is threatened by a three-fold environmental disaster: Warmer water disrupts coral growth; acidic water affects corals abilities to secrete new skeletons; and increasingly intense hurricanes break it up. As a result thousands of marine species are on the brink of extinction. The Maldives in the Indian Ocean - many tropical islands forming the Indian Ocean archipelago are likely to become submerged in the next two decades as a result of rising sea levels and increasing numbers of heavy storms. Traditional ski resorts in the Alps such as Kitzbuhel in Austria for example will disappear from the tourist map within 20 years because of the lack of snow. Furthermore, the future of many unique animal species that have attracted wildlife tourism is in jeopardy as habitats, breeding grounds and migration routes are changing. If global warming gets worse, entire populations of polar bears in the Arctic region, Wildebeests in East Africa, Mountain Gorillas in Uganda and Rwanda or Monarch Butterflies in Mexico may be destroyed. Tourism world wakes up to the climate crisis Climate is an essentia