Nature-based tourism in a changing climate: costs and benefits for endangered species

气候变化是人类面临的最大挑战之一，对自然界和人类福祉产生多重相互作用的影响。据估计，旅游业的碳排放量占全球碳排放量的8%，而旅游业的数量仍在快速增长。然而，旅游业是一些生物多样性高但财富低的国家的经济支柱，以自然为基础的旅游业可以为保护个别物种、景观和海景提供重要的激励。这不可避免地使基于自然的旅游业对生物多样性和人类福祉的积极和消极影响之间产生紧张关系。这种紧张关系很难解决，迄今为止也很少受到关注。这个博士项目将量化基于自然的旅游对气候的积极和消极的社会生态影响，使用一个特定的濒危物种——非洲野狗作为模型系统。最近的研究表明，气候变化对野狗种群产生了重大影响，显然是因为高环境温度限制了野狗的狩猎行为，导致低食物摄入量，从而导致高死亡率。这个相对简单的机制使得碳排放和野狗灭绝风险之间有了直接的联系。与此同时，野狗种群依赖于野生动物友好的栖息地来生存，而这些栖息地的大部分都得到了保护，以支持以自然为基础的旅游业。反过来，以自然为基础的旅游业支持当地经济和社会文化系统，因此，这些经济和社会文化系统也面临着气候变化影响的风险，因为野狗和野生动物友好栖息地的丧失。具有讽刺意味的是，这些社会文化系统严重依赖持续的旅游业，因此，游客前往和访问该地区的碳排放量持续增加。这个项目试图探索这两个显然不可调和的权衡。该项目的具体目标是：(1)将国际旅游业（特别是航空业）的碳足迹数据与现有的将碳排放与非洲野狗种群动态联系起来的模型相结合(3)，量化旅游业对整个非洲特定地点野狗灭绝风险的贡献。(2)通过对肯尼亚和南非当地社区的半结构化访谈和焦点小组访谈，调查和评估自然旅游对当地人与野狗共存的容忍度的贡献。(3)通过对非洲政策制定者和保护专业人士的重要信息提供者访谈，探讨基于自然的旅游在保护支持野狗种群的景观中所起的作用。(4)结合野狗种群自然旅游的成本（碳排放方面）和收益（栖息地保护、当地容忍度和对人类福祉的贡献方面）的证据，为在减少碳预算的情况下促进旅游业的政策辩论提供信息。

Climate change represents one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, with multiple, interacting impacts on the natural world and on human well-being. Tourism has been estimated to account for 8% of global carbon emissions, with tourism volumes continuing to grow rapidly. Nevertheless, tourism is an economic mainstay for some countries with high biodiversity but low wealth, and nature-based tourism can provide important incentives to conserve individual species, landscapes, and seascapes. This inevitably sets up tensions between the positive and negative impacts of nature-based tourism on both biodiversity and human well-being. Such tensions are difficult to resolve and have, to-date, received little attention. This PhD project will quantify the positive and negative climate-related socioecological impacts of nature-based tourism, using as a model system a specific endangered species, the African wild dog. Recent research has suggested major impacts of climate change on wild dog populations, apparently because high ambient temperatures constrain wild dog hunting behaviour, leading to low food intake and hence high mortality. This relatively simple mechanism allows direct links to be drawn between carbon emissions and wild dog extinction risk. At the same time, wild dog populations rely on wildlife-friendly habitat for their persistence, and much of this habitat is conserved to support nature-based tourism. In turn, nature-based tourism supports local economies and socio-cultural systems, which are therefore also at risk from climate change impacts, in terms of loss of wild dogs and wildlife-friendly habitat. Ironically, these socio-cultural systems rely heavily on continued tourism and thus, continued and potentially increasing carbon emissions from tourists travelling to and visiting the region. This project seeks to explore these two apparently, irreconcilable trade-offs. The project's specific aims are:(1)Combining available data on the carbon footprint of international tourism (especially aviation) with an existing model linking carbon emissions to African wild dog population dynamics(3), quantify the contribution of tourism to wild dog extinction risk at specific sites throughout Africa. (2) Through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with local communities at established field sites in Kenya and South Africa, investigate and evaluate the contribution of nature-based tourism to local people's tolerance for coexisting with wild dogs. (3) Through key informant interviews with African policymakers and conservation professionals, explore the role that nature-based tourism plays in conserving landscapes which support wild dog populations. (4) Combine evidence on the costs (in terms of carbon emissions) and benefits (in terms of habitat conservation, local tolerance and contributions to human wellbeing) of nature-based tourism for wild dog populations, to inform policy debates around the promotion of tourism within shrinking carbon budgets.