Jiang, Min, DeLacy, Terry and Noakes, Steve (2009) Tourism, the Millennium Development Goals and Climate Change in the South Pacific Islands. In: International Conference on Meeting the Millenium Development Goals: Old Problems, New Challenges, 30 Nov-1 Dec 2009, Melbourne, Australia.

Abstract

As the leading industry in most Pacific Island Countries (PICs), tourism plays an important role in the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for Pacific people. Heavily dependent on climate and the environment, tourism is very vulnerable to risks and impacts rising from climate change. This vulnerability of tourism is worse for those remote and small island countries in the Pacific. The already occurring climate changes are hindering MDGs in the region by having negative impacts on tourism. Therefore, Pacific tourism needs to take adaptation measures to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience to climate change impacts. This paper discusses the interactions between tourism, the MDGs and climate change in South Pacific. Comparison of tourism intensity to indicators of standard of living for Small Island developing states show that tourism is a powerful agent of poverty alleviation. As a highly climate sensitive economic sector in a highly climate vulnerable region, Pacific tourism needs to adapt immediately to climate change impacts to build and increase resilience to fight against it. Therefore, more efforts are needed to fill in the knowledge gap of tourism adaptation to climate change from various disciplines and perspectives.

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