Tourism, health, and climate change are intertwined in Asia and the Pacific, where rising temperatures and extreme weather threaten livelihoods and economic stability. Climate-resilient policies, partnerships, and health-focused systems are vital to mitigating these impacts and sustaining growth.
Climate change poses significant interconnected threats to tourism, health, and economic stability across Asia and the Pacific. Rising temperatures and extreme weather events are damaging key tourist attractions while also increasing health risks for both visitors and residents.
Many coastal resorts are at risk from rising sea levels. Most resorts in the Maldives are experiencing erosion of coral reefs and beaches; some are already experiencing damage to infrastructure.
Rising temperatures trigger health-related diseases, including non-communicable diseases, among tourists and the host community.
Increased frequency and intensity of severe weather events contribute to storms, tsunamis, and severe flooding across the region, including in People’s Republic of China, Myanmar, and Indonesia.
Vector-borne diseases (those spread by insects or animals) are expanding their range, threatening previously unaffected mountain communities in Nepal and Bhutan, among others.
Pollution also affects tourist destinations, causing hygiene problems, waterborne infections, and respiratory diseases.
Meanwhile, tourism itself contributes to climate change, accounting for about 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This creates a vicious cycle where tourism both suffers from and exacerbates climate impacts.
Health issues, climate hazards, risks, and vulnerabilities, along with the tourism sector’s ability to cope with them, are significant concerns. These challenges can disrupt tourism operations and significantly impact socio-economic benefits, especially in the face of pandemics and natural disasters. With tourism contributing over 20% to GDP in countries like the Philippines, Cambodia, Maldives, and Thailand, these interconnected challenges pose a serious risk to regional economies and livelihoods, necessitating urgent integrated solutions.
Investing in climate-resilient health and tourism systems will help mitigate these risks, contribute to improved health outcomes, and enable tourism services to sustain economic growth. Implementing concrete measures that simultaneously benefit health, tourism, and climate will lead to significant positive impacts across these interconnected sectors.
Investing in climate-resilient health and tourism systems will help mitigate risks, contribute to improved health outcomes, and enable tourism services to sustain economic growth.
To achieve this synergy, the following measures are needed:
Develop overarching tourism policies and guidelines that prioritize health, safety, climate change mitigation, and adaptation, ensuring a sustainable and resilient future for the tourism sector.
Address shared hazards, risks, and vulnerabilities across tourism, health, and climate change sectors with multi-sectoral actions to strengthen resilience and adaptability of the tourism sector. This will include multisectoral coordination and collaboration to support host communities’ capacity and resilience, fostering inclusive partnerships and knowledge sharing for a stronger, united approach.
Enhance tourism surveillance while ensuring interoperability with health information systems and early warning alerts systems to enable rapid and timely appropriate responses to traveler-related diseases, disease outbreaks, extreme weather events, and disasters. This will require the promotion and adoption of innovative digital tools in the tourism sector.
Implement capacity-building programs to improve planning, monitoring, and coordination within the tourism sector, and to promote sustainable business practices and climate-smart models that protect the workforce and ensure sector sustainability.
Conduct studies to guide safe tourism reopening and promote strategies for long-term resilience, supporting recovery and sustainable growth in response to future public health emergencies, and other disasters. This includes ensuring adequate health facilities and services which can address any surge in health needs of tourists and host communities.
Promote the decarbonization of tourism facilities and services and the use of low-carbon transport for accessing these sites to help reduce the carbon emissions of the sector. In parallel with ongoing efforts to decarbonize health services, particularly hospitals and health facilities, this will ensure that the tourism and health sectors are proactively contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A regional coordination mechanism and strategy is also needed to strengthen integrated collaboration among tourism, health, and climate change sectors in Asia and the Pacific.
Health and well-being are essential to vibrant social lives. If tourists, tourism professionals, and host communities are unaware of climate health risks, countries that rely on tourism for revenues could face significant economic losses and social challenges. This could result in reversals of the reduced poverty achieved by many developing countries, while hindering further their socio-economic development.
Source: blogs.adb.org/blog