“It’s in Our DNA”: Climate Change and Perceived Resilience and Adaptive Capacity in Nature-Based Tourism in Lofoten, Norway

Abstract

In 2018, tourism was the fastest growing sector in the world, accounting for 10% of all jobs worldwide and 10.4% of the world’s gross domestic product. Tourism is often cited as a strategy for future development at national, regional, and local levels. This paper takes a closer look at the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway, where the increase in nature-based tourism over the last two decades has occurred in parallel with the restructuring of the traditional fisheries. Nature-based tourism in rural regions relies heavily on a broad range of ecosystem services (ES). This paper will present how stakeholders in nature-based tourism assess the influence of climate change on ES crucial for their activities and for the destination and will outline and explain how the practitioners perceive their ability to withstand or adapt to these changes. With the aid of models depicting potential future climate scenarios, we initiated discussions with stakeholders and found that tourism actors have only to a minor degree sought to develop strategies to increase adaptive capacity and therefore resilience to climate change. Based on our findings, we discuss how the adaptive capacity of individual actors in nature-based tourism forms the basis for the system’s resilience, and that a general resilience focus also forms the basis for transformational capacity, a capacity needed for future resilience. In light of our findings and analyses, we will conclude by reflecting on overarching systemic transformative tendencies in the wake of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and obligations contained in the Paris Agreement on reducing global emissions.