Climate change planning in a coastal tourism destination, A participatory approach

Abstract

Participatory planning is one strategy to increase tourism suppliers’ capacity to jointly anticipate climate change impacts and implement locally feasible and acceptable solutions; however, participatory planning is uncommon. In this study, we co-created a series of planning workshops with tourism partners to examine and address climate change impacts (challenges and opportunities) on Mount Desert Island, Maine, USA. We co-designed and facilitated two Zoom workshops in spring 2021 for tourism suppliers. Workshops focused on (1) identifying climate change impacts to the tourism system and (2) developing planning priorities for the destination. Workshops resulted in two planning priorities: visitation shifts and the opportunity to become a more sustainable destination in response to climate change. Our participatory approach brought together diverse tourism suppliers that do not usually collaborate to increase the destination’s capacity to plan for and respond to climate change. Similar participatory approaches may benefit other natural resource dependent contexts.