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As evidenced by the Davos Declaration, sustainability and sustainable development have emerged as dominant concepts of tourism, also in various more concrete attempts to locally guide, steer, and change tourism in practice into a more environmentally friendly business. But, as Saarinen argues, it is “important to realize that sustainability is not a oneway street in the global-local nexus” (Saarinen 2006, p. 1134). The issue of climate change in tourism is not only related to behaviours and actions at a particular destination. As pointed out by Bramwell and Lane “sustainable tourism is now seen as more than just a destination issue; it is a total trip problem of global relevance to climate change (Bramwell and Lane 2008, p. 1). It has been demonstrated by several studies that: tourists consume greater amounts of energy, water and materials in tourism destinations than they do at home. This consumption behaviour significantly limits opportunities for greater sustainability. At the very least then, less consumptive tourist behaviours are required if the sustainable tourism challenge is to be met (Williams and Ponsford 2009, p. 398). Nearly 25 years since the Brundlandt report, “sustainable tourism development outcomes remain problematic and continue to evoke emotive debate” (McDonald 2009, p. 455). One fundamental reason is that tourism in itself represents a mobility that is deeply problematic in the context of climate change. As Hall observes: All demand and supply facets of tourism are effected by climate change, but just as importantly tourism has direct and indirect effects on climate change itself over all stages of mobility. Conceptualising tourism in terms of wider aspects of human mobility therefore has considerable importance with respect to assessing the complete impacts of tourism on climate change (Hall 2005, p. 341). For tourism it is especially problematic that its mobility has so far been fossil-fuel driven, notably cars, buses and aeroplanes. The question at stake is how tourism can be sustained without the carbon supplies that are its lifeblood? In all strategies for mitigating climate change reducing carbon use within transport is crucial, it accounts for 14% of total greenhouse gas emissions (Dennis and Urry 2009, p. 9). As pointed out by Hall, “[a]ny strategy towards sustainable tourism must thus seek to reduce transport distances, and vice versa” (Hall 2005, p. 344). Low carbon 78
alternatives need to be developed as alternatives to the current high carbon mobility system. The discourse of climate change, together with the present scenarios of peak oil and the goal of a low-carbon society, have thus brought to the fore the centrality of mobility to social life and urgent pressures to drastically reduce or develop alternative mobilities. Mitigation strategies mean that all kinds of mobilities and movements dependent on fossil-fuels must somehow be reduced, or replaced by other alternative energy sources, in order for a low carbon society to emerge. Changes are likely to come, for example through modifying economic incentives, tax changes and international agreements and policies. For tourism there may soon come times when serious restrictions are put on its mobility. According to Dennis and Urry: It is clear that air travel would need to be the most heavily rationed of the forms of transport that have so far become commonplace (Dennis and Urry 2009, p. 157). With a current annual growth rate of about 5% in the Western world, the emissions from flying are expected to about triple in less than 25 years and probably far more if one considers the potentially enormous growth expected from China and other rapidly industrialising nations. This implies that the “energy demands of tourism transport will undoubtedly be a focal point for new regulatory structures” (Hall 2005, p. 343). With regards to aviation, which indeed is central for tourism mobility, it has “been identified as a significant and rapidly growing contributor of emissions of greenhouse gases” and “there is increasing concern of how emissions from this sector can be addressed in view of the global emission reduction needs” (Gössling, Haglund, Kallgren, Revahl and Hultman 2009, p. 1). If emissions from aircraft: continue to grow at the observed rates, aviation alone may be responsible for the total amount of emissions in the EU that can be considered sustainable in the next 30 to 40 years (Gössling et al. 2009, p. 2). Changing human behaviour and tourism mobility is not easy. At the individual level it seems that tourism consumers “increasingly claim they have greater concern for the environment” but also that “little evidence 79
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© Icelandic Tourism Research Centr
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Table of Contents 1. Introduction .
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esearch but also “education and c
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Tourism images have had a longstand
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gradually expanded and become more
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Tourism - an earthly business For u
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Image 1.3: The Island of tourism &
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2. Image & destination The actual a
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variety of sources could be used in
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consequences for how she or he will
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either the textual or the visual, a
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Composed of numerous small encounte
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materiality. Yet, you are able to r
Page 29 and 30:
demand it is mediated by investment
Page 31 and 32: tourism reflects broader social and
Page 33: signification, not the least in tou
Page 36 and 37: usiness and market to potential cus
Page 38 and 39: ound to cross traditional disciplin
Page 40 and 41: sightseeing and whatever activities
Page 42 and 43: Social science research is carried
Page 44 and 45: environment. If they had, they were
Page 46 and 47: Our argument is that it is importan
Page 48 and 49: able to cross the minds of many tho
Page 50 and 51: Eight on my list is the heritage of
Page 52 and 53: The cartography of tourism imaginat
Page 54 and 55: Images of Iceland as a tourist dest
Page 56 and 57: Whatever the specifics and forms of
Page 58 and 59: Are you dressed in the road map of
Page 60 and 61: Summing up It has often been lament
Page 62 and 63: A challenge for tourism theory and
Page 64 and 65: carved in stone, they are not given
Page 66 and 67: some of the things that signalled t
Page 68 and 69: Tourist was in fact that “we are
Page 70 and 71: globalisation gets attributed excep
Page 72 and 73: do so on the basis of its own speci
Page 74 and 75: Arguing for or against the idea of
Page 76 and 77: pushed many economies towards crisi
Page 78 and 79: Whatever new ideologies of tourism
Page 80 and 81: The IPCC Reports are based on reach
Page 84 and 85: supports the position that signific
Page 86 and 87: “voluntary compensation is still
Page 88 and 89: terms of both adaption and mitigati
Page 90 and 91: Pratt and Watts 2000, p. 840). What
Page 92 and 93: co-creator of tourist spaces” (Ek
Page 94 and 95: can researchers use photography and
Page 96 and 97: latter, in order to set the scene f
Page 98 and 99: Even though the Earth is mentioned
Page 100 and 101: [M]ost significant phenomena that t
Page 102 and 103: social science when it presents its
Page 104 and 105: They further argue that “[t]ouris
Page 106 and 107: meaning and matter. The research ag
Page 108 and 109: REFERENCES Aramberri, J. (2009). Th
Page 110 and 111: Franklin, A. (2004). Tourism as ord
Page 112 and 113: Jóhannesson, G.Þ. and Huijbens. E
Page 114 and 115: Shaw, G. and Williams, A. (2004). T
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