Tourism-related carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are a central driver of anthropogenic climate change. At the same time, climate change has both direct and indirect impacts on tourism, varying from damages of tourist assets due to extreme weather events, to losses of biodiversity. Small island developing states (SIDS) heavily depend on international tourism as a source of revenue and income. Therefore, much could be gained by assessing the vulnerability of the SIDS tourism sector and by identifying measures that may assist these islands in their sustainable adaptation efforts. Against this background, this interdisciplinary paper provides a review of tourism development and the implications of its emissions on the global climate, linked with observed and projected influences of climate change in the Pacific region, to explain the growing vulnerability of the overall sector, with a particular focus on SIDS tourism. A description of the effects of COVID-19 on international tourism and its consequences for SIDS complement the analysis. Case studies of two Pacific islands present some evidence of current climate impacts, underscoring the multiple risks small island nations and their tourism sectors face. The paper concludes by stating that some measures may be prioritized by decision-makers, so as to increase the resilience of a transforming tourism sector in SIDS.

Tourism resembles an indispensable source for financing national development and securing local livelihoods in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with their sun-sea-sand tourism. Related carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions counteract sectoral development as climate impacts have begun to severely reduce the attractiveness of destinations. This is valid especially for disaster-prone SIDS where slow and rapid onsetting phenomena and severe, frequent weather events are already experienced, increasingly putting tourist assets, infrastructure, local livelihoods and unique biodiversity under pressure. Against this background, this review synthesizes the recent climate change and tourism literature relating to main SIDS regions, highlighting what is at risk. The authors provide latest evidence of the role tourism plays for these islands and elaborate the peculiar climate risks, impacts and consequences for tourism development. The current state of adaptation is explored and research priorities in SIDS regions are highlighted. Whereas SIDS show high mitigation ambition, the significance of CO₂ emissions along the value chain and especially related to the transport to SIDS destinations remains a problem that developed nations must address in their national emission reduction plans. Further research at the interface of climate change and tourism is needed, contributing to the decarbonisation of tourism and successful adaptation in SIDS.

The coronavirus outbreak in late 2019 and the subsequent restrictions on mobility and physical contacts caused an extreme collapse of international tourism. Shortly before the pandemic turned the world upside down, one of the most pressing issues in global tourism was a phenomenon that became known as overtourism. It describes massively the negative impacts of tourism on destinations and the frustrated residents protesting against it, with discontent reaching a dimension that could hardly be estimated at the time when Doxey’s Irritation Index was created. Especially in southern European destinations, thousands of people have taken to the streets over their dissatisfaction with the unlimited growth of tourism and its negative effects on their daily lives. Within a few years, small neighbourhood actions morphed into coordinated social movements demanding that politicians make fundamental changes to the socio-economic system. Those events demonstrate a politicizing effect of tourism that has not sufficiently been addressed hitherto in tourism research, which is mainly focused on the attitude of the visited towards tourism itself. This article offers a broader socio-political approach that focuses on tourism as one of the largest industries within a capitalist system that has massive impacts on people’s lives, rather than simply on changing attitudes towards tourism. Twelve problem-centred interviews with actors of the anti-overtourism movements in the Balearic Island of Mallorca were conducted to examine the effects of overtourism and COVID-19-caused tourism breakdown on residents’ socio-political perspectives. Building on the transformative learning theory developed by the American sociologist Jack Mezirow, the analysis of the data revealed far-reaching influences on residents’ personal development, fundamental perspectives and professional decisions.