Inclusiveness that improves tourism governance is significant for development if benefits from tourism are distributed equitably. Declaration of 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism and adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have seemingly brought tourism to the forefront of development even where the SDGs have limited tourism focus. This paper examines how tourism governance is poorly applied in Africa. It interrogates the challenges of integrating tourism governance, mining, and conservation within the SDGs framework in Africa. Sustainable tourism governance frameworks have not comprehensively inculcated trust, justice, social capital, power, and participation. Using mining and conservation in South Africa and Zimbabwe respectively, it analyses how mining affects sustainability, as actors in tourism are unable to conserve and protect tourism sites. Achieving the SDGs requires collaboration between international actors, governments, the private sector, and locals in an inclusive governance based on justice, inclusion trust and equitable power relations.

Purpose: The study conceptualizes service quality as a second-order factor and analyzes its influence on customer satisfaction, perceived value, image, consumption emotions and customer loyalty by testing a structural equation model. Design/methodology/approach: The model is tested using data collected from 672 guests staying in accommodation establishments located in South Africa. The study follows a hierarchical approach using confirmatory factor analysis to test the second-order factor model and structural equation modeling to test the overall model. Findings: The results indicate that the second-order factor model is acceptable both empirically as well as conceptually and performs better than other competing models of service quality. The findings provide support for all hypotheses and evidence of a structural model with a high explanatory power. Research limitations/implications: The second-order factor model is less useful when fine-grained analyses are needed, such as when a detailed assessment of the level of quality of service offered by a hospitality organization is required. Practical implications: The second-order factor model allows for an analysis of service quality at different levels of abstraction. Accommodation managers interested in customers’ evaluation of service on a cumulative basis can make use of the global measure to determine service quality evaluations. Practitioners can also use the findings to manage the different dimensions of service quality. Originality/value: The study demonstrates that service quality is best represented as a second-order factor, and in doing so, it provides an improved measurement of the construct. More so, by integrating the variable in a nomological network, the research develops a more parsimonious model than the existing ones.

Although the tourism sector has greater potential for job creation than the mining sector, the debate on which sector may be more sustainable for employment and local social development, has not been extensively researched, especially in the global South. The popular tourist destination of Dullstroom, Mpumalanga has come under threat from an increase in the number of mining applications for coal (and diamonds). Despite opposition to mining from civil society due to the potential destruction of the natural environment and hence tourism job losses, mining applications are being approved by the ruling party in the country. Government and mining companies state that mining will contribute to much needed job creation and social development. Disparity thus exists between mining and tourism development frameworks for sustainable job creation. This research thus presents perspectives from key participants surrounding the sustainability of mining and/or tourism jobs in Dullstroom, including the benefits and challenges for job creation and sustainability offered by both sectors. Investigations reveal that mining should not be allowed in pristine areas such as Dullstroom’s wetlands, biodiversity and conservation and agricultural lands. Besides the short-term jobs offered by mining, the precautionary principle, as suggested in South African regulations, should apply against mining development since there are added threats of serious or irreversible environmental degradation which does not support sustainable tourism development and long-term jobs. However tourism in Dullstroom is also beset with challenges which need to be addressed if tourism is to contribute to sustainable employment for the majority of people.

This paper examines social differences and drought vulnerability among subsistence livestock farmers in Mpakeni, Mpumalanga province, South Africa. This paper asks, how do social differences between households and power relations shape vulnerability to drought? This is against the backdrop that parallel exposure to climatic risks does not translate to similar vulnerability among households residing in the same community. In-depth interviews were used to obtain primary data from purposively selected participants in Mpakeni. Some key findings reveal that being a non-local elite, a migrant settler and some female-headed households, especially those burdened by the additional tasks of caregiving, amplifies the challenges of securing forage when depleted in communal grazing fields. This is partly due to reduced time allocated to shepherding their livestock to the bank of a local river. Also, non-local elite and those who lacked social ties to the headman found it difficult to get compensated when their livestock were eaten by wild animal upon illegal entry to a game reserve rich in vegetation. This paper argues that vulnerability studies that focus independently on issues like gender, ethnicity and class may miss the dynamics that shape individuals’ vulnerability to drought, which could have severe consequences for implementing effective interventions.

In the wake of a rapidly changing climate, climate services have enabled farmers in developing countries to make informed decisions, necessary for efficient food production. Climate services denote the timely production, translation, delivery and use of climate information to enhance decision-making. However, studies have failed to analyse the extent to which Indigenous farmers residing and producing their food in an environment degraded by multinational corporations (MNCs) utilise climate services. This study addresses this gap by analysing Indigenous farmers’ utilisation of climate services in Igbide, Olomoro and Uzere communities, in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews were used to obtain primary data. Findings suggest that although the activities of Shell British petroleum, a MNC, have compromised food production, other factors have fuelled farmers’ unwillingness to utilise climate services. These include their inability to access assets that can significantly scale up food production and lack of weather stations close to their communities needed to generate downscaled forecasts, amongst others. This paper argues that failure to address these issues may stifle the chances of actualising the first and second sustainable development goals (no poverty and zero hunger) by 2030 in the aforementioned communities.