This research explores the nexus of climate change and socio-economic change with a focus on the significance that local conditions (physical and cultural) can have in influencing vulnerability and resilience. In order to better examine how climate change impacts interact with socio-economic changes and are experienced at the community scale, this research integrates household survey data with geospatial processing techniques. Two comparative study sites, one rural and one urban, were selected in the region of Ladakh; an area experiencing severe climate change impacts alongside rapid socioeconomic and political changes. Archival data was used to supplement survey responses and provide additional historical context. Survey responses were then combined with Hot Spot and Kernel density analysis in ArcGIS to identify areas of high and low spatial concentration and correlation. While climate change is widely perceived in many Western Himalayan mountain communities, impacts of climate change as an issue of high importance are moderated by other pressing socioeconomic, cultural, and political concerns. The role of locality and place-based themes such as community attachment, social cohesion, and sense of place, emerged as influential factors in enhancing social resilience and thereby reducing dimensions of local vulnerability to climate change impacts.

Following global trends, nature-based tourism in the Aysén region of Chilean Patagonia has grown dramatically in recent years. This growth has challenged traditional economic activities derived from commodification of natural resources, including ranching, logging, and mining. A qualitative research study conducted in 2016–2017 used semi-structured interviews and focus groups to investigate how local residents perceived the changes that accompany rural development around the nationally protected area of Cerro Castillo, projected to be one of the region’s protected areas that will drive economic development through tourism in coming decades. Results identified several themes reminiscent of the rural transition that took place in the western United States in the mid to late-1900s. During this era, the remote, rugged, wild frontier lands of the sparsely populated intermountain west shifted from an economy grounded in extractive industries to a service-based one, geared towards amenity migrants and tourists seeking recreation opportunities and closeness to nature. Patterns and lessons are drawn between similar transitions across geographies and timescales, which may assist planners with understandings of trends and tendencies as tourism continues to influence rural transition in Patagonia.

Forest reserves are spaces of conservation and are often spaces of ecotourism as well. Evidence suggests that local community participation in the conservation of the forest reserve space tends to break down under weak ecotourism sector management. The Bossou Forest Reserve (BFR) in Guinea, West Africa has deteriorated considerably due to the fragmentation of the reserve and the inexorable decline in Bossou chimpanzee populations since the 1970s. The situation is largely attributable to several complex and interrelated factors, including the lack of established processes to support meaningful community participation in conservation and ecotourism planning. Ecotourism planning, with the participation of local communities, is considered to strengthen the management of the BFR and conservation connectivity. This paper reports on an approach to sustainable ecotourism planning of the BFR using the Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) framework to determine the drivers of change and livelihood concerns. Fieldwork undertook in 2019 entailed concept mapping activities which were followed by a participatory geographic information system (PGIS) approach to support community-scale ecotourism planning that considers the multiple needs of stakeholders. Data analysis resulted in a community-centered situational assessment and classification of opportunities, both of which inform ecotourism planning and social-ecological resilience. The study provides baseline data for developing a robust ecotourism management plan capable of coping with the changing internal and external stressors. PGIS-based ecotourism planning can support community priorities and is potentially applicable to other West African areas with similar ecological and livelihood settings.

In this article, we bring together understandings of the spectacle of nature and spectacle 2.0 to show how people are invited to participate in the spectacular production of nature. Recent work has expanded on the Debordian notion of spectacle, interrogating the ways people do not just consume images, but help to produce and enact spectacle: spectacle 2.0. Building on this, we argue that in conservation, consumers increasingly interact with the spectacle through digital and real-life means, thereby reinforcing and reproducing the nature that is being transformed. We term this process the spectacle of nature 2.0. We present the case of Valle Chacabuco in southern Chile, which has been transformed into Patagonia National Park. This process has been welcomed by the international conservation community, but has incited tension and conflict with local residents who have their own very different sense of Valle Chacabuco. Through the production of spectacle, park discourses highlight the heroic role of Northern conservationists, obscuring the underlying capitalist logics of the project and the social tensions it has created. We argue that it was possible to unmake/remake Valle Chacabuco from once a place of livelihoods, ranching, and production to a place of unspoiled nature through the recruitment of digital and material interaction. In the process, environmental politics and activism are channeled back into the dominant underlying capitalist ideology. Patagonia National Park is now a place that the park promoters claim belongs to the world, its nature and culture to be consumed and reproduced by environmentalists and tourists.