Vulnerability is dynamic : An interactive approach to enhance adaptation strategies to climate change for coastal tourism
Many coastal tourism destinations, and islands in particular, are vulnerable to climatic and environmental changes. The environmental challenges in coastal destinations are complex and include: loss of land through erosion and sea-level rise; changing nature, frequency, and/or intensity of storms; ocean acidification; coral bleaching; drought; sea water intrusion; new movement of disease; and invasive species. These vulnerabilities develop and change shape continuously, a process that we do not understand very well.Moreover, the social consequences of climate change and coastal tourism are urgent as coastal tourism affects some of the most vulnerable populations. Many small island developing states (SIDs) rely on coastal tourism for employment and GDP; their national economies are smaller and less diversified than many other tourism destinations. At the same time, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) often recommend tourism as a key opportunity for development. However, the environmental resources that coastal tourism destinations depend on are recognised by the IPCC as being vulnerable to climate change. This complex relationship is understudied, which leaves island destinations unprepared to respond to emerging issues. Clearly, improving the sustainability of tourism in coastal destinations is not something we can ignore.Existing static vulnerability assessments can offer detailed insights, but they miss a critical dimension: change. Ongoing interactions in a destination affect how vulnerabilities emerge over time. As such, current research offers little practical advice of how we can proceed. Our comprehension of who and what is vulnerable, and how that changes over time, is limited. This provides insufficient information on what vulnerabilities we can reduce and what adaptive measures we can/need to take in the face of change. To improve our understanding of emerging vulnerabilities and adaptation strategies, we need new means of studying the dynamic nature of vulnerability.This thesis aims to contribute to this critical knowledge gap by understanding how we can conceptualise dynamic vulnerability, by taking into consideration human-environmental interactions and how they progress over space and time. Moreover, this study looks at what a dynamic understanding of vulnerability means for how we study vulnerability, and what new adaptation strategy insights come out of such an approach. As coastal tourism on SIDs is a pressing area where research is needed, two destinations in the Caribbean are the contextual focus to develop and assess the dynamic approach. Barbados is the first island of study and Curaçao the second. Both islands were visited twice and fieldwork on Barbados was completed before fieldwork on Curaçao began. As such, although Barbados was critical for developing the approach, the results of the process pertain more to Curaçao’s context.The first three Chapters (2, 3, 4) lay the conceptual groundwork for vulnerability as a dynamic phenomenon. Chapter 2 puts forward integrative systems thinking as a more appropriate framework for studying environmental-related tourism. The following chapter introduces the notion that vulnerability is a dynamic phenomenon and as such, requires a dynamic approach to create more appropriate adaption strategies. Chapter 4 focuses on how to do dynamic vulnerability assessments in a tourism context. Specifically, it looks at what researchers need to include so that their assessments capture complexity, interactions, and the perpetuation of change over space and time. The principles of a dynamic approach—agency, heterogeneity, feedbacks, uncertainty, and iteration—are introduced and explained. These principles are coupled with practical methodological tools to show how researchers can use this conceptual lens to gain insights on emerging vulnerabilities.Chapters 4, 5, and 6 show how to operationalise a dynamic vulnerability approach, what insights this approach yields on emerging vulnerabilities, and what these insights mean for adaptation strategies.The methodological tools—desktop research, interviews, simulation development, simulation sessions, and computational modelling—are described in chapter 4. Moreover, three research steps—scoping (identifying important human-environment system features), system integration (bringing the system features together), and experiencing and experimenting (stakeholders and researchers exploring different emerging vulnerabilities in a dynamic simulated coastal system setting)—help structure how to order applying the methodological tools. In the same chapter, an illustration of how sea-level rise (one of the many climate-related challenges) is analysed in the context of the two islands going through the three research steps to give an idea of how the methodological tools can be exercised in practice.Chapters 5 and 6 delve into two tools of a dynamic vulnerability approach more deeply. In chapter 5, the results of the simulation game Coasting played with local stakeholders in Curaçao are discussed and analysed. The simulation provides a dynamic environment for stakeholders to experience environmental change, trade-offs, changing capacities, new environmental issues, and opportunities and barriers to (collaborative) actions. In chapter 6, computational modelling enables us to explore the main aspects of dynamic vulnerability over a longer time scale and many more simulated runs than the simulation sessions. This computer simulation is analysed to explore how socio-ecological vulnerabilities emerge over time, what factors affect these emerging vulnerabilities, and what are the main influential factors that result in socio-ecological vulnerabilities that destinations want to avoid, including severe decline of operator numbers and environmental degradation.To conclude, this thesis provides a conceptual lens for capturing dynamic vulnerability to improve understanding of emerging vulnerabilities that affect (coastal) tourism destinations and what that means for adaptation strategies. For example, the approach shows that to encourage action in Curaçao, it is important to consider the trade-offs stakeholders experience and make emerging environmental challenges, such as drought, visible to stakeholders (chapter 5). The model illustrates the main factors contributing to actions under changing conditions as well as the main factors contributing to socio-ecological vulnerabilities (chapter 6). Some of the main factors—rate of pollution and tourism revenue—are things that Curaçao can incorporate in their destination management plan. Importantly, the approach, analysis, and results are not limited to the case study areas. They can be applied to other (coastal) destinations. As such, this dissertation offers a critical contribution to coastal tourism research, vulnerability studies, and adaptation governance to deal with the ongoing challenges of vulnerabilities that will not cease changing.
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| Format: | Doctoral thesis biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
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Wageningen University
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| Subjects: | Life Science, |
| Online Access: | https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/vulnerability-is-dynamic-an-interactive-approach-to-enhance-adapt |
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