Spotlight on climate change adaptation

Editorial November 21, 2024

The tourism sector is at a crucial juncture in the face of the challenges posed by climate change. More than a simple response to a crisis, adapting to climate change is a unique opportunity to reinvent business models, operational practices and the visitor experience. This transformation is essential to ensure the sustainability of destinations and businesses while meeting the expectations of customers who are increasingly concerned about their environmental impact.

In this newsletter, we explore concrete approaches and present tools for integrating adaptation into our strategies. Discover how tools such as the Climate Change Adaptation Workshops or the ski resort self-diagnosis tool can guide businesses in understanding the impacts and in reducing their vulnerability. We also highlight the systemic challenges identified by experts such as Ouranos and how to overcome them to strengthen the resilience of the sector.

These examples show that each actor, from the site manager to the organizations responsible for regional tourism development, has a key role to play in transforming climate challenges into levers of innovation and attractiveness. We hope that these reflections will inspire you to actively contribute to the transition to a more sustainable, resilient and meaningful tourism.

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Girl Scout Team

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Strategic insights: tools and practical workshops

Diagnosis of the vulnerability of the Quebec ski system to climate change

This project consists in establishing a portrait of the vulnerability of the alpine skiing system in Quebec to climate change and identifying the sensitivities and intervention levers on which to work to strengthen the resilience of the sector. Between 2022 and 2024, the Association of Quebec Ski Resorts (ASSQ) commissioned Ouranos to carry out this study on the system surrounding alpine ski resorts and adaptation to climate change. The objective of this project was to assess the vulnerability to climate change of ski resorts distributed in 16 administrative regions. Thus, several steps were necessary:

• Know the relevant climatic hazards, in particular those related to natural snow on the ground in Quebec;
• Understand vulnerability: the assets, activities and people exposed; their sensitivities and capacities to adapt to the current and future climate;
• Analyze the economic impacts of climate change on the alpine ski system;
• Engaging stakeholders to develop a shared understanding of the complexity of the system, taking into account concerns in order to propose effective, fair and sustainable solutions for all actors.

Finally, a vulnerability self-diagnosis tool was built to allow resorts to identify what their main sensitivity factors are and to identify the factors that contribute to their ability to adapt as well as a sectoral resilience plan, developed to guide the ski sector and its stakeholders towards greater resilience in the face of climate change.

Climate Change Adaptation Workshops

Climate Change Adaptation Workshops are fun and collaborative discussion workshops that provide the keys to collectively make the best possible choices, avoid maladjustments and find co-benefits. They are aimed at businesses and municipalities and offer a three-stage process: triggering adaptation, discovering the method and experimenting with the method. Inspired by the pedagogy of La Fresque du Climat, they are driven by collective intelligence and are played with maps that have already been created (based on the IPCC Working Group 2 report) as well as with maps to be created. The number of participants is between 6 and 12.

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Window on the world: innovations and inspirations

Adapting tourist sites to global warming

The group of experts on climate change adaptation published a report last May entitled Take action today to ensure that Quebec adapts to the reality of accelerating climate change. It is structured around five axes:

1. Ensure preventive management of natural ecosystems and ecosystem services;
2. To protect the health, safety and well-being of all;
3. Adapt buildings and infrastructures and ensure the resilience of essential systems;
4. Promote the adaptation of economic activities and the financial system in the face of risks;
5. Support the ability to adapt and the transition to action of all actors.

According to the expert group, “the absolute priority would be to make the fight against climate change, and in particular in this case adaptation to climate change, a real national project”.

Tourism and climate change adaptation: Three courses of action

The article Three Ways Tourism Can Support Climate Adaptation, published by the Global Center on Adaptation, explores concrete solutions for the tourism sector to contribute to resilience in the face of the impacts of climate change. Three main approaches are proposed: preserve ecosystems that support climate change adaptation; support communities with livelihood opportunities to strengthen their resilience to climate change, and contribute to raising public awareness of the need to adapt to climate change.

These ideas highlight the importance for tourism of integrating adaptation strategies in order to protect ecosystems, infrastructures and the populations that depend on them. Different inspiring examples are presented for each course of action.

Supporting adaptation to climate change in Quebec's tourism sector

As the climate changes, the tourism sector faces unprecedented challenges to adapt and thrive in a context of environmental change. For several years, Ouranos has been taking action for the tourism industry in Quebec. This innovation hub presents a series of concrete strategies that encourage tourism actors to integrate climate risks into their planning. This includes measures to protect infrastructure from extreme weather events, adapt tourist seasons to new climate cycles, and improve the management of water and energy resources. These targeted strategies demonstrate that adaptation is not only a matter of survival, but also an opportunity to stand out as a resilient and responsible destination. This article invites us to a crucial reflection: how can the sector become a driver of innovation to deal with global warming?

Tourism operators and territories: adapting to deal with climate change

In order to support French tourism players (communities and operators) in building their strategy for adapting to climate change, ADEME has developed a dedicated methodological guide. A free and available online tool “AdapTour” was created in order to be able to integrate practices and adaptation measures according to the type of actor and the sector of activity. The methodology proposes to guide tourism actors step by step: 1) define the technical scope of its approach 2) identify climate risks 3) guide the development of a strategy and an action plan 4) provide tools and information to assess the strategy over time. It also brings together concrete examples illustrating the various climate hazards through explanatory sheets and was built based on experiments carried out with tourist actors and their feedback on the ground.

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Your partner in innovation: tailor-made solutions

Exploring the impacts of climate change on tourism through collective intelligence and play

The “Climate Fresco - Tourism” workshop allows participants to discover the links between climate change and their local impacts, while co-building solutions adapted to their sector. We can help you have this fun and transformative training experience!

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