Abstract
This study develops a climate communication recognition scheme (CCRS) for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites (WHS), in order to explore the communicative power of heritage to mobilize stakeholders around climate change. We present this scheme with the aim to influence site management and tourist decision-making by increasing climate awareness at heritage sites and among visitors and encouraging the incorporation of carbon management into heritage site management. Given the deficits and dysfunction in international governance for climate mitigation and inspired by transnational environmental governance tools such as ecolabels and environmental product information schemes, we offer “climate communication recognition schemes” as a corollary tool for transnational climate governance and communication. We assess and develop four dimensions for the CCRS, featuring 50 WHS: carbon footprint analysis, narrative potential, sustainability practices, and the impacts of climate change on heritage resources. In our development of a CCRS, this study builds on the “branding” value and recognition of UNESCO World Heritage, set against the backdrop of increasing tourism—including the projected doubling of international air travel in the next 15–20 years—and the implications of this growth for climate change. The CCRS, titled Climate Footprints of Heritage Tourism, is available online as an ArcGIS StoryMap.
Highlights
Heritage tourism represents an important nexus in which cultural heritage resources and anthropogenic climate change intersect
We argue for the value of a more holistic response in heritage management to the challenges of climate change, one that takes into account impacts alongside fostering adaptive capacity, integrating carbon management practices for mitigation, and communicating climate change through the public platforms afforded by heritage resources
Given the relative lack of attention paid to mitigation and climate communication, we focus our efforts in the communication recognition scheme” (CCRS) especially on these two dimensions, but impacts and adaptation are represented
Summary
Heritage tourism represents an important nexus in which cultural heritage resources and anthropogenic climate change intersect. This is especially the case for efforts pursuing climate mitigation and climate communication. Tourism is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and the tourism industry will require broad changes to operations in order to mitigate climate change [1,2,3,4]. In 2005, the tourism industry (including transport, accommodation, and activities) was estimated to contribute 5% of global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions (with aviation transport accounting for 40% of this amount, car transport for 32%, and accommodation for 21%) [5,6,7]. Scholars in tourism studies have turned a spotlight on global climate change [2,3,10,11], including increasingly sophisticated accounts of the carbon systems in tourism [12,13] and “carbon management” to mitigate the impacts of climate change from
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