Tourism and Climate Change: Risks and Opportunities

Becken (sustainable tourism, Lincoln University) and Hay, a climate scientist and consultant to the UN and the World Bank, compile and analyze the current understanding of the interactions between climate change and tourism, highlighting policy implications as well as the repercussions for tourism businesses, policy and decision makers, and tourism practitioners. In the early chapters of the book, they provide a general overview, illustrated by four case studies relevant to a wide audience of tourism stakeholders. The following seven chapters offer a more detailed description of the tourism-climate system as well as in-depth discussions of greenhouse accounting for tourism, mitigation, climate risk management, and tourism-climate policies. While the book mainly targets decision makers who must take into account the impacts of climate change on tourism or who must consider the greenhouse gas emissions caused by tourism, it will also be of interest to university students of environmental sciences and tourism. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Dr. Susanne Becken is a Principal Research Officer at Lincoln University in the field of Sustainable Tourism. Until recently she was a Research Leader with Landcare Research, New Zealand, where most of this book has been written. Susanne led a government-funded project on travel behaviour and greenhouse gas emissions from international tourists. She has also completed a range of consultancy work in the areas of energy efficiency, climate change, and relating policies. At present Susanne is the lead consultant in a UNWTO project on climate change and tourism in Fiji. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism and acts as a contributing author to the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; she also represents Oceania/Southeast Asia on the WMO expert team on climate and tourism.