Tourism, including both leisure and business travel, represents a worldwide, growing and complex mobility system interrelating in many paradoxical ways with climate change. On the one hand there is a rapidly growing global interest in nature experiences in the Polar Regions, tropical coral reefs and other vulnerable landscapes. On the other hand, through fossil fuel-based car mobility, aviation, cruising and accommodation, tourism is a major contributor of global greenhouse gases. In fact, weather extremes, floods, droughts, sea level rise and other climate-related impacts are increasingly affecting tourism destinations and activities. Prof. Lamers will illustrate these paradoxical tourism-environmental relations based on research in the Caribbean and the Polar Regions, arguing that instead of simply seeing tourism as a blessing or curse, we should study and tackle tourism as a complex societal syndrome, characterized by particular symptoms and requiring context dependent measures at different scales.

The fossil fuel, agriculture, steel, cement, and chemical industries are some of the usual suspects that come to mind when compiling a short list of industries that contribute to global warming*. Tourism is often not included in that list. Yet, in 2013, the carbon footprint of tourism was estimated at 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike other industries, these emissions continued in the last decade to rise. Why? Cheryl van Adrichem and Martijn Duineveld argue that part of the answer is that the seriousness and injustice of the climate problem is not truly being acknowledged within tourism. To put it bluntly: both tourists and the tourism industry are notorious climate deniers. But while many tourists live in denial to justify their own travel behavior, the tourism industry deliberately uses climate denial to protect its business interests. And this is just one of the forms of climate obstruction: they also engage in greenwashing, promise false solutions and self-regulation, and engage in resistance to climate policy. The good news is that it is relatively easy to undo the climate obstruction of the tourism industry. Van Adrichem and Duineveld will provide some suggestions about how you can contribute to this.

Machiel Lamers| He is a Personal Professor at the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University, leading the international ANTARC-SHIP (2023-2027) and the TRANS-ACT projects (2026-2028), both funded by NWO, and focusing on the drivers, impacts and regulation of Antarctic tourism. He also has a leading role in the INREEF programme, funded by the Wageningen Global Sustainability Programme, focusing on the role of tourism in the functioning and governance of Marine Protected Areas in Indonesia and the Caribbean. Lamers is a member of the Social and Economic Research Applications working group of the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO), and a steering group member of its Polar Coupled Analysis and Prediction for Services (PCAPS) programme, focusing in the improvement and the impact of environmental forecasting services for users in the Polar Regions.

Cheryl van Adrichem | Cheryl van Adrichem is a PhD Candidate and Lecturer in the Cultural Geography Group at Wageningen University. Cheryl’s main interest is related to the politics of climate change, in particular the factors that obstruct climate action. In her current PhD project, she studies the underlying power dynamics and dominant discourses that shape climate change responses of a carbon-intensive industry, specifically tourism.

Martijn Duineveld | He is an Associate Professor at the Cultural Geography Group at Wageningen University and co-founder of The Dutch Network for Climate Obstruction Studies (Climate Obstruction NL), which connects academics, investigative journalists, and NGO researchers who are studying climate obstruction in the Netherlands. He is currently involved in the W*O*L*F* project (2023-2041), which exposes how big industry obstructs transitions to a low-emission society and climate justice. His studies have been communicated in innovative ways, speaking to academia and the broader public, including filmmaking, newspaper articles, bullshit bingo’s, and local news blogs.

*Which poses a serious threat to humanity and is already causing significant harm and death to many communities worldwide