Implications Of Global Warming For Tourism In Canada - Research Paper Example

?Implications of Global Warming for Tourism in Canada Tourism sector in Canada Tourism is one of the economic activities that are growing at a very fast and it has played a crucial role in the realization of economic, infrastructure-related and technological developments in many tourist destinations. The industry has now become of the major income earner and source of employment in these countries. According to Edgell (1993), tourism stimulates the growth of basic infrastructure, enhances the growth of domestic industries and transfer of information and technology, and attracts foreign investment. One of the countries that have benefitted a lot from tourism is Canada. Canada is the second largest country globally and one of the prosperous nations on the planet earth. It is a member of the Group of Eight (G8) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Its economy is rated as the 9th largest economy globally (CNN News). The key industries in the economy of Canada are manufacturing, service sector, energy and agriculture. Apart from these, tourism also plays a big role in the economy of Canada. In Canada, tourism accounts for about 2% of its overall gross domestic product (GDP), with a GDP value that equals to that of forestry, hunting, agriculture and fishing combined. In 2007, tourism contributions to Canada reached $28.6 billion, a 5.9% increase turnover from 2006. During the same year, 2007, it generated a total of $21.2 billion in government revenues and over 653,400 jobs for the citizens. In 2008, these increased to $74 billion in revenues and over 66, 000 jobs (Canadian Tourism Commission, 2008). This alone indicates that tourism is a major contributor in the economy of Canada and that the sector has the potential of experiencing continuous growth. Some of the factors that attract and promote tourism in the country include excellent infrastructure, good economy, geographic variety and political stability. Most important among these factors are its geographical variety. Most of the nation’s tourism is centered around its four largest cities namely Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. These cities are famous for their culture, diversity, and lots of historic sites and national parks. However, the tourist attractions are also distributed all over the country’s 10 provinces and 3 territories. Generally, the nation’s tourist attractions include glacial features, parks, waterfalls, historic sites, culture, mountains, ski resorts, museums, art galleries, and hiking and camping destinations. There are also a lot of rivers and lakes for outdoor recreation, boating, fishing and hunting, Crescent Street located in Montreal and suspension bridge located above the Capilano River, and Valley of the Ten Peaks and the Moraine Lake located in Alberta province. The country is bordered by Atlantic Ocean to the east, Pacific Ocean to the west and Arctic Ocean to the north and therefore beaches and other coastal features form an important tourist attraction feature especially during the summers. The above discussion and explanations are a proof that tourism is an important part in the sustenance of the economy of Canada. This means that anything threatening the sustainability of this sector directly threatens the Canadian economy. One of the things that is currently threatening the sustenance of this sector is global warming. This phenomenon has brought about some environmental changes that have significant implications for Tourism in Canada. In order to understand this deeply, it is important to have an overview of what global warming is. Global warming In simple terms, global warming can be defined as the rise in the average global temperatures. This increase in temperature is felt both in the earth’s atmosphere and the oceans/seas. According to Solomon et al (2008), the occurrence of global warming is influenced by different factors that are collectively known as external forcing. These are processes that are external to the earth’s climate system and the earth’s climate responds to these forcing. They include radiative forcing, volcanic eruptions, changes in solar luminosity and variations in the orbit of the orbit of the earth around the sun. Vaclav (2003) explains that radiative forcing results from changes in atmospheric composition and this mainly revolves around the concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The sum effect of all other factors is very minimal as compared to the effect of GHGs alone (Houghton et al, 2001). According to Henderson-Sellers and McGuffie (2005), GHGs bring about what is known as the green house effect. This is a phenomena where GHGs like carbondioxide, CO2, methane, CH4, water vapour, H2O, nitrogen compounds, chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, ozone, among others reduce the quality of heat escaping from the earth’s atmosphere by “blanketing’ the atmosphere (Mitchell, 1989). The earth receives heat inform of short infrared radiations (IR) and emits in form of long IR. GHGs specifically hinder the long IR from escaping out of the earth’s atmosphere (Businger and Fleagle, 1980). They absorb the long IR meant to take away heat from the earth’s atmosphere causing the earth surface to warm and leading to an imbalance between incoming and outgoing heat. The result is gradual accumulation of heat within the earth’s atmosphere (Spencer 2010). CO2 is a strong factor among all the GHGs. However, Ivar et al (2011) reveal that ethane is also a serious one especially if is release is increased. The overall result of the mechanism explained above is a rise in earth’s average temperatures leading to a rise in the seal levels, melting of snow and ice caps, possible expansion of sub-tropical deserts and change in the pattern and amount of precipitation. The rise in sea level in the arctic region is also accompanied by continued retreat of sea ice, permafrost and glaciers (Royal Society, 2010). Other likely effects of global warming include extremes of weather events like droughts, heavy rainfalls/floods and heat waves. Some species are now free to migrate to areas that are becoming warm or have been forced to migrate to cooler areas if their initial habitation areas get warmer. The migration of gray whale from Pacific Ocean to Mediterranean Sea and Neodenticula seminae from Pacific Ocean to North Atlantic are examples of these (Mother Nature Network, 2011). The mentioned climatic and environmental changes resulting from global warming present many implications to the tourism sector including the Canadian tourism sector. Implications of Global Warming for Tourism in Canada Many of Canada’s physical features that are tourist attractions, specifically the mountains and ski resorts, have snow and ice. As noted above, one of the most important impact of global warming is an increase in the average global temperature. This is such a big threat to the Canadian tourism sector considering that a significant number of its tourist attraction features have snow-dependent beauty. This is to say that snow is an important component in the beauty. It is also an important factor in the utilization of these features. Good examples of these are the ski resorts. Skiing takes place over a large mass of ice occurring naturally on the ground. This means that anything threatening the continuous availability of snow directly threatens the Canadian tourism sector. As for its mountains, they are bound to lose their beauty if the global warming continues because it will continue to remove the snow cover on top of these mountains. The glaziers on top of them are going to retreat tremendously leading to a loss of aesthetic and loss of ski slopes for winter and summer (Laughren, 2009). McBoyle and Wall (1992) reveals that in countries that benefit from winter tourism, snow reliability is one of the most important elements of the tourist offers. This is because snowboarding and skiing depend on large and reliable amounts of snow. Other snow related activities that benefit from this are cross-country skiing and snow mobiling. global warming has caused a significant retreat of glaziers all over the world. Winters with large amounts of snow are important in preventing a repeat of incidences like that which happened in Alps during the end year seasons, 1987/88-1989/90. These incidences were a result of little snow cover and they caused a stir. Koenig (1998) explains that mountain regions are very sensitive to climate change compared to areas low altitude regions. Burki et al (2003), states that in summary, any slight changes in temperature in these regions manifests as melting in permafrost, receding glaziers, reduced snow cover and extreme events like landslides. This means that mountain tourism and snow tourism in Canada is going to loose its share of market in the tourism sector. Canada is located in colder regions of the northern hemisphere and therefore winter tourism is such a big resource for its tourism sector. For winter tourism to take place successfully, good snow conditions must prevail (Breiling and Charamza, 1999, Scott et al, 2001). As for mountain tourism, the prerequisite will be enough snow cover. Viner and Agnew (1999) explain that without enough snow, there will be reduced possibilities for maintaining profitable ski tourism. This will lead to reduced earnings in the ski tourism. Koenig (1998) explains that holiday and weekend guests plan their trips at short notices. Because of this, a growing factor of influence in this is weather forecasts. This is in addition to weather conditions recorded in the place. Research on the impact of climate on winter tourism has been undertaken in many countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Switzerland and the UK). Scot (2003) explains that all the studies undertaken indicate that if climate change were to occur, then it would have severe implications for the tourism industry, especially winter tourism. The studies undertaken also reveal that some regions may be able to maintain the viability and profitability of their winter tourism through the adaptation of appropriate but expensive intervention strategies like artificial snowmaking (Scott et al, 2003). However, other countries will lose their winter tourism as a result of diminishing snow pack. As for those that will maintain their operations through the help of artificial snow making, economic viability of the project after absorbing extra snowmaking costs may force them to quit the business. In a nut shell, climate change resulting from global warming will lead to a new pattern of tourism regions that are favored and those that are not favored for ski tourism (Morin, 2006). Scott et al (2002) explain that if all other factors were to remain the same, then ski tourism would shift from being distributed across the high latitude region into being concentrated only in the high-altitude areas whose quantities of snow make them to be described as snow-reliable. This means ski resorts located at low altitude zones will be forced to withdraw from the market faster. Only those areas that have infrastructure that allows for the access of altitudes more than 2000 meters will continue to be viable and experience an increase in demand. This is another source of increased expenses for the tourism in Canada in terms of building new resorts. Even with the potential business presented by increase in demand for ski resorts located in the high altitude regions, there is also possibility that more resorts in this region will tamper with the viability of tourism too. This is because more ski resorts will lead to increased pressure on the high-mountain regions and yet these regions are ecologically sensitive. Increased wastewater and rubbish will lead to conflicts with conservation groups and authorities managing these areas (Scott and Suffling, 2000). The safety of tourist is an important element in the sustainability of the tourism industry. Tourist will always be willing to visit places in which they are assured of security and this includes political stability and the safety of the physical environment. On the other hand, they will always avoid places where their security can be compromised by any human or natural factors including climate and physical features. The infrastructure in such places should also be good for ease of access. Elsasser and Burki (2002) explain that global warming increases the rate of melting of permafrost and this renders mountain areas more vulnerable to landslides. Lift masts, cableway stations and other buildings in permafrost lose their stability. This means they could fall at any time. In addition to this, warming in mountain areas make climbing and hiking more dangerous because of rock fall (Elsasser and Burki, 2002). These makes such places to be unsafe and thus tourists may not be willing to visit them. This threatens to reduce the revenue collected through tourist activities in the mountainous regions. It is expensive to brace and to anchor such infrastructure or buildings on permafrost soils. This means that global warming eats up the profits accrued from the tourism industry by enlarging the margin of its expenses. We should also acknowledge that the changing weather conditions create new conditions for mountain tourism. This could present different tourist opportunities for mountain summer tourism in the future for the Canadian tourism sector. Examples of these include biking, trekking and hiking. These conditions will result from higher fog level or increased precipitation. Despite these potential opportunities, such conditions could also present increased threats to the Canadian tourism sector. Increased and stronger extreme events are a threat to the industry, its activities and infrastructure. Additionally, temperatures experienced during warmer winters will render ice fishing impossible (Scott, D. et al, 2002). Conclusion and Recommendations Global warming has very serious negative implications on the sustainability and profitability of the Canadian tourism industry. It threatens to reduce the viability of some of its most important tourist attraction features and activities such as snow capped mountains, skiing slopes on mountains, individual ski resorts, ice fishing, winter tourism and snow tourism. It reduces the amount and sizes of their supportive features like permafrost, snow and glaziers. These threaten to reduce the profitability of this industry because they the potential of rendering these features almost useless for tourist attraction. Global warming also increases the costs of maintaining the tourism industry because of additional costs incurred in efforts of maintaining the amount of snow in low altitude ski resorts and building high altitude ski resorts. It also includes costs for building and maintaining strong buildings and infrastructure that can withstand conditions of frozen permafrost. The other major implication from global warming is reduced safety resulting from destabilized tourist sites like landslides on mountains and reduction of skiing snow. Canada as a nation may not do much to rescue its tourism sector from the effects of global warming. The elimination of the effects of global warming needs collective global efforts because the impact of GHGs released in one corner of the earth will finally reach the other far end. This calls for joint global efforts of reducing the amount of GHGs released by every country so as to control the rate at which global warming takes place. Stricter condition controlling carbon trading should be adopted and heavier fines should be imposed on countries and industries that exist their share of carbon emission. These could be non-financial for example a compulsory one or two-month closure of the company. This will reduce incidences where companies exceed their share of the emissions just because the purchase of extra carbon credit is much cost-effective than adopting less polluting production/manufacturing processes. In order to avoid losing the business completely in the near future, Canada should shift to alternatives to ski-tourism, introduce non-snow winter activities related to skiing and invest in all-year tourism. Although interventions to global warming works best if done at global level, the Canadian government should insist on a reduction of the emission of GHGs to reduce a high rate of climate change at local level. This is especially important for tourist features located near major cities where micro-climate could aggravate the effects of global warming. References Breiling M, Charamza P (1999). “The impact of global warming on winter tourism and skiing: a regionalised model for Austrian snow conditions.” Regional Environmental Change. (1) pp 4-14. Burki, R. Elsasser, H. and Abegg, B. (2003). “Climate Change - Impacts on the Tourism Industry in Mountain Areas.” 1st International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism, Djerba. April 2003 Businger, J and Fleagle, R. (1980). An introduction to atmospheric physics: International geophysics series (2nd Ed). San Diego. Canadian Tourism Commission (2008). Tourism and Canada’s Economy. 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