Climate crisis, mobilities and tourism: investigating how tour operators (re)act to a changing world

• Ano de defesa: 2022
• Autor(a) principal: Fornari, Fábio Gonçalves Pais
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Climate crisis; COVID-19; Crise climática; Mobilidades; Mobilities; Operadores turísticos; Tour operators; Tourism; Turismo
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/100/100140/tde-24052022-105848/

As the world enters the year 2022, the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic act as concomitant crises that increase the pressures on countries, industries, and communities. Such pressures might generate conflicting responses from policies and practices aiming at a short-term economic recovery in contrast to climate commitments to reduce carbon emissions by 2030 and promote a transition to climate neutrality by 2050. Inspired by this complex scenario, this research aimed at analysing the place of the tourism industry in a changing world, with a focus on how tour operators from Brazil and Germany (re)act in face of the climate crisis and policies and targets to contain it, such as the Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development Goals, European Green Deal and national climate policies. Thus, it provides an analysis of different forces that might influence tourism, while putting the current challenges and problems in perspective. The New Mobilities Paradigm and the critical approaches to sustainability in tourism were used as theoretical frameworks to guide such discussions, as well as formulating the questions for the online survey and in-depth interviews conducted with Brazilian and German tour operators and representative associations. The results of the survey allowed for the exploration of some debates around climate justice and (tourism) mobility justice and unveiled questions beyond the technical aspects of the climate agenda. Results indicated that most participants are aware of climate issues, but still focus almost exclusively on the paradigm of growth and economic benefits of tourism, assuming the sector is helping generate a greater good in the end, despite its current and possible future climate impacts. This might threaten the sectors climate ambitions to reduce its carbon footprint, which calls for greater debates on what actions in multiple dimensions are required to align the sector to climate targets and to take responsibility in face of the climate, environmental and social impacts it produces.