Global tourism and adaptation

Bernama: Global tourism stakeholders can play a significant role in addressing climate change if the innovativeness and resources of this sector are fully mobilised and oriented towards mitigating its negative impacts, a Nepalese member of parliament said.

Mahalaxmi Upadhyay Dina told delegates to the 15th General Assembly of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarians' Conference on Environment and Development (APPCED) here Tuesday that the tourism business and destinations also needed to adopt work ethics that exerted minimum impact on the environment and to capitalise on new opportunities in sustainable ways.

She said this was critical because despite having a huge potential in tourism development, climate change had caused a big setback for the sector as well as the socio-economy of the people at large. Citing Nepal which is situated 60m above sea level, she said a recent report observed that the hot weather was rapidly shifting from a lower tropical climate to a higher range of alpine climate, causing serious impacts such as water sources drying up and warmer days in winter.

"Nepal, despite being a non-emission zone is directly or indirectly being affected by the global emission of greenhouse gases which causes temperature rise. "It is observed that the people living there are finding it hard to adapt to the changing weather patterns, as they are traditionally unprepared to cope with extreme weather conditions such as frequent droughts and floods, breakout of crop and livestock diseases and conflicts over water-sharing," she said….

Tourists in Kathmandu, Nepal, shot by Wonderlane, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license