A Decade of Climate Change and Tourism Research in Tanzania: Where are we?

Abstract

Tourism is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, yet many countries in the global South have the lowest capacity to adapt. Given the urgency of adapting tourism to climate change, this study brings to the fore the state-of-the-art on climate change and tourism research in Tanzania through a review of the literature published between 2014 and 2023, using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement 2020. The study is the first to comprehensively compile unsurpassed scholarly work on climate change and tourism covering the period between IPCC-AR5 and AR6. The assessment identified 85 publications, of which 16 addressed climate change and tourism. Of the 16 articles, 78 percent assessed impacts, 11 percent adaptations and 11 mitigations. The study exemplifies inadequacies in research on climate change and tourism linkages, builds a solid ground for research, and informs policymakers about the fate of tourism development in a data-scarce situation. With the vast land devoted exclusively to conservation and tourism, and numerous higher education institutions committed to research and consultancy, the assessment demonstrates that Tanzania's understanding of tourism in the face of climate change is insufficient. More adaptation and mitigation research are, therefore, pertinent.