The Ministerial Council for Sustainability and the Committee of Tourism Ministers have approved the Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the tourism industry. The plan, which was drafted by the Environment Ministry, Tourism Undersecretariat and National Tourism Service (Sernatur), seeks to build capacities and generate conditions that will support the implementation of measures for adapting to and addressing the current and future effects of climate change. The goal is to increase resilience and sustainability in the tourism industry by 2024.
The main threats climate change poses to the tourism industry are the loss of natural tourist attractions, higher temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns and the occurrence of extreme weather events. These impacts are distributed unevenly in the tourism industry, and more intensely affect small companies with limited flexibility to adapt their business models.
Environment Minister Carolina Schmidt stated, “the tourism industry, which is so important for Chile given its natural conditions, is among the industries that could be at risk due to the changes that climate change will cause in Chile. It is therefore a tremendous milestone that a robust adaptation plan has been approved. It will allow us to build capacities, strengthen institutional structure, generate information and implement actions to decrease the negative impacts of climate change.”
The plan establishes measures for guiding the tourism industry’s decision-making processes and for promoting best practices among tourism service suppliers, visitors, local communities and stakeholders from the public and private sectors in order to avoid the negative impacts of the effects of climate change.
The first cycle of the plan, updatable every five years, includes measures that focus on increasing the industry’s capacity to adapt to climate change, identifying the most at-risk tourist destinations along with the specific impacts that they face and encouraging the application of best practices.
The plan was built through a participatory process with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The first step entailed assessing the vulnerability to climate scenarios and evaluating climate change impacts and the risks faced by the tourism industry. The participation processes also contributed to defining and planning adaptation measures. The second step involved developing an online citizen consultation process regarding the proposal for the plan, which was implemented between September and November 2019 and included six workshops held in various regions of Chile.