Climate Change, Resilience and Transition to a Carbon Neutral Economy

Abstract

The tourism industry is in the unique and unenviable position of being simultaneously a major contributor of greenhouse gases (GHG) and a significant victim of changing climate. Historically, research on the relationship between tourism and climate lagged significantly behind that of other studies on climate change (Pang, McKercher and Prideaux, 2012) and to some extent remains on the periphery of mainstream tourism research when measured by the volume of published research, the number of active tourism researchers and the number of climate change subjects taught in tertiary level tourism programs. Much of the research has focused on social science aspects of climate change, without necessarily delving into deeper hard science based models. This chapter reviews a range of models and frameworks that are used in climate studies in a tourism context, followed by models and frameworks that relate to resilience as a response to climate change. It concludes with a review of three theories and associated models of the future transition to a carbon neutral economy.