Tourism governance and enabling drivers for intensifying climate action

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity for tourism to change so to make a more meaningful contribution to sustainable development, including action on climate change. To achieve such a sustainable tourism transition, an effective enabling environment, supported through appropriate governance arrangements, is required, However, our understanding of what suitable governance modes look like to support tourism’s climate actions are limited. To address this gap, this study applies a qualitative approach to investigate the link between enabling drivers and different types of governance. Drawing on meta-governance thinking and 23 interviews with tourism experts from the Asia Pacific region, the opportunity for transformational change is assessed. Experts do not believe transformational change is possible but hope for incremental changes. The analysis demonstrates that activating a wide range of enabling drivers across four types of governance mode will be necessary to catalyse change. Three examples of tourism governance highlight that polycentric governance modes have greater potential for strengthening the enabling environment for a low carbon transition.