A critical analysis of tourism as a vector and victim of climate change: A review paper

This study provides a critical conceptual discussion on how tourism simultaneously acts as an agent and a victim of climate change, using East Africa as a case example. The study seeks to discuss the environmental, economic, and social dimensions that render tourism an agent of climate change while facing adverse consequences from it. Multiple theories guide the study, such as the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC), Ecological Modernization Theory (EMT), Political Ecology, and Resilience Theory. Methodologically, the study undertakes an interpretive review of secondary literature and case studies through a qualitative lens on issues of tourism's carbon emissions related to land-use, infrastructure development, and vulnerability to climate-induced disruptions. The study brings out the fact that while tourism is considered a large-scale GHG emitter chiefly through transport and infrastructure development, paradoxically, it causes severe ecosystem degradation and infringement of the interests of marginalized populations, especially from the Global South. Tourism, by nature, adapts to its landscape and climate and is thus at risk of rising sea levels, unpredictable weather, and biodiversity loss, thereby threatening nature-based tourism destinations. The study, therefore, makes several contributions. At the theoretical level, it builds a nexus of fragmented theories to explain tourism's feedback relationship with climate change. It underlines the need for low-carbon technologies, community-based adaptation, and ecosystem conservation at the practical level, while also drawing on the fractured governance landscape at the policy level, championing multi-level climate-tourism governance that is accountable, resilient, and inclusive. In conclusion, the study articulates the incompatibility of the current growth-based tourism model with environmental sustainability. Without transformative changes, it will inadvertently contribute to the degradation of ecological integrity and thus to economic livelihood. It has recommended degrowth as one of the surest ways to bridge tourism development with global climate goals, mainstreaming climate resilience into tourism planning, institutional capacity building, and multi-sector governance.