Understanding the IPCC Climate Risk-Centered Framework and Its Applications to Assessing Tourism Resilience

Abstract

Climate change affects all human and ecological systems. The rapid climate impacts are increasingly evident on all economic activities, including tourism. Regarding the fact that “the window is closing”, climate resilience is urgently needed to protect tourism resources and maintain the quality of tourism offerings. Since the recent climate and tourism scientific literature emphasizes the necessity to mobilize existing knowledge, standardize practices, and explore appropriate tools related to tourism adaptation, we provided desk research and discussed the latest achievements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) and related knowledge platforms. According to the results of this review, it seems that the vast majority of the authors use vulnerability assessment (VA) to provide a solid basis for climate change adaptation (CCA) options applicable to tourism. Also, there is a lack of application of the latest IPCC recommendations founded in climate risk assessment (CRA). In the context of CRA, vulnerability was often assessed in a static way, with limited consideration of future hazards, probabilistic estimates, and the interactions between climatic and non-climatic drivers. Moreover, the methodologies applied to assess climate-related issues in tourism have been highly heterogeneous, hindering comparability and aggregation of results. Since risk is a useful conceptual framework for understanding tourism’s climate issues and modalities to reach its climate resilience, we discussed the significance of shifting the vulnerability concept towards a risk-centered framework. This review paper also provides a basis for a common understanding of CRA, a step-by-step approach to its assessment, and the explanation of CCA options to strengthen the tourism community, since a decisive decade of climate action is upon us.