Debbie Hopkins

The sustainability of climate change adaptation strategies in New Zealand's ski industry: a range of stakeholder perceptions

Climate change is a critical sustainability challenge for alpine tourism and the ski industry. Climate change adaptation is characterised as identifying and taking advantage of new business opportunities plus reducing physical risks. For adaptation strategies to be sustainable they should consider the environment, economy and society. While several adaptive ski industry strategies have been identified, not all can fulfil these criteria; some adaptive strategies could be perceived as unsustainable, or maladaptive. This paper provides a qualitative, perceptual study of ski industry stakeholders in Queenstown, New Zealand, addressing perceptions of climate change adaptation by the core industry, wider industry actors, local community and tourists. It answers two research questions: What are perceived as the main climate change adaptation strategies for Queenstowns ski industry? How do ski industry stakeholders perceive current adaptation strategies in terms of sustainability? It finds snowmaking central to addressing both current weather variability and medium/long-term future climate change. Ski-field operators use snowmaking to ensure the industrys economic sustainability, to extend seasons even beyond traditional norms, but with little consideration for environmental or social sustainability. It finds some local people questioning snowmaking on ethical and environmental grounds, and skier acceptance of snowmaking connected to activity preference.

Climate change in a regional context: relative vulnerability in the Australasian skier market

The concept of relative vulnerability allows for comparisons between analogous units in a regional context. It is utilised within tourism studies to consider how climate change might affect demand and perceived attractiveness of destinations relative to their competitors. This paper examines Australian tourists travelling to New Zealand’s ski fields, responding to the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) assertion that, “tourist flows from Australia to New Zealand might grow as a result of the relatively poorer snow conditions in Australia” (Hennessy et al. 2007: p 523). This travel flow is not a new phenomenon; however, it is forecast to increase as climate change impacts upon Australia’s natural and man-made snowmaking capacity with implications for the viability of the ski industries in both Australia and New Zealand. The Queenstown Lakes Region (South Island, New Zealand) serves as the field area for this study. The empirical research utilises a qualitative methodology for which in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with New Zealand ski industry representatives and Australian tourists during the southern hemisphere winter season of 2011. Findings suggest that the social context of vulnerability creates difficulty in forecasting the outcomes and behaviours associated with relative vulnerability. While tourism representatives’ focus on snow reliability and availability to conceptualise relative vulnerability, Australian tourists are influenced by a broader range of factors including their own travel experience. This paper demonstrates a clear need to move beyond a focus on snow reliability to consider the broad range of factors that contribute to regional variations in vulnerability. In doing so, it confirms the critical importance of situating relative vulnerability within a social context.

The perceived risks of local climate change in Queenstown, New Zealand

Place-embedded, resource-dependent industries are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The scientific framing of these risks can be understood through modelling; however, risks are perceived by non-scientific communities in more culturally relevant and localised frames. This empirical study utilised qualitative, semi-structured interviews with four stakeholder groups connected to the ski industry in Queenstown, New Zealand. The objectives of this research were to identify current scientific knowledge on climate change risks to Queenstowns ski industry and to critically address how the risk of climate change is perceived. This paper reports three main findings: (1) scientific reporting and expert interviews expect climate change to manifest as inter-annual variability up to the 2050s, (2) current climatic variability is perceived to be the greatest risk to the ski industry at present and (3) climate change is perceived to be distant and a greater threat to other people and other places giving rise to ‘optimistic bias’.

Climate change perceptions and responses in Scotland's ski industry

The negative impacts of climate change for the ski industry have been well documented. However, research has largely focused on key ski markets in North America and Continental Europe. The study presented in this paper addresses climate change perceptions and responses in the more marginal ski destination of Scotland. Using a qualitative, interpretivist methodology, this paper contributes through a local-scale, single-site study of a ski area where technical adaptations are not utilised and which therefore relies on business responses to climate change. Findings suggest that while local weather is perceived to be a large and unmanageable risk to the industry, and a downward trend is identified in terms of snow reliability, these risks are not perceived to be connected to the wider anthropogenic climate change discourse. Waiting for knowledge to increase before taking adaptive action appears to be the most popular business strategy; however, autonomous adaptation is taking place in the form of business diversification, which mitigates against risks including, but not limited to, climate change. This paper concludes that experiences and perceptions of climate change will be highly localised and as a result so too will adaptive behaviours. Marginal ski destinations such as Scotland will be facing a range of non-climatic impacts which will contribute to their contextual vulnerability to climate change and capacity to adapt.

Academic mobility in the Anthropocene era: a comparative study of university policy at three New Zealand institutions

Anthropogenic climate change is a wicked problem, requiring fundamental behavioural and technological responses now, in the Anthropocene, a term denoting the current era of human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth. Travel and transport policies are key to effective responses, confronting both leisure and business travellers, including academics. This paper explores in detail the factors that promote or suppress academic travel, examining institutional policies which frame academic mobility practices at three New Zealand universities; University of Otago, University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington. It finds evidence of little congruence between sustainability statements, with their wide discourses on environmental sustainability, and the institutional policies governing academic mobility. Three overriding themes emerging from the analysis are presented: hollow words (describing a lack of meaningful commitment to sustainability, with disconnections between sustainability rhetoric and key policies), unspoken words (assumptions about the necessity of travel) and facilitating mobilities (promoting travel, rewarding those who travel). These themes highlight varying degrees of divergence between the sustainability imperatives of these universities and the carbon emissions of institutionalised academic mobilities. Concluding remarks highlight opportunities for New Zealands academic institutions to align travel policies with growing sustainability imperatives and discuss future research directions.

Applying a Comprehensive Contextual Climate Change Vulnerability Framework to New Zealand’s Tourism Industry

Conceptualisations of ‘vulnerability’ vary amongst scholarly communities, contributing to a wide variety of applications. Research investigating vulnerability to climate change has often excluded non-climatic changes which may contribute to degrees of vulnerability perceived or experienced. This paper introduces a comprehensive contextual vulnerability framework which incorporates physical, social, economic and political factors which could amplify or reduce vulnerability. The framework is applied to New Zealand’s tourism industry to explore its value in interpreting a complex, human-natural environment system with multiple competing vulnerabilities. The comprehensive contextual framework can inform government policy and industry decision making, integrating understandings of climate change within the broader context of internal and external social, physical, economic, and institutional stressors.

“I wanted to go here”: Adolescents’ perspectives on school choice

ABSTRACT New Zealand legislation removing school zones radically reshaped school choice, resulting in increased school stratification from parental choice frequently driven by social factors such as ethnic makeup of the school community. This article considers school choice through the eyes of 1,465 adolescents from 12 secondary schools in Dunedin (New Zealand). The most common reasons for school choice included: preference for a coeducational school, school’s facilities, positive comments from parents/students, and friends’ enrollment. Reasons for school choice differed by who was making the decision. Social factors and school programs/facilities, rather than proximity to home, influenced school choice decisions in Dunedin.

Understanding Sustainable Mobility: The Potential of Electric Vehicles

Rising awareness of the environmental impacts of dominant mobility practices lead to the development of the sustainable mobility paradigm. This paradigm advocates three features of a mobility system: 1. A reduced need to travel, 2. Modal shift towards more sustainable options, and 3. Reduced vehicle kilometres travelled. In this paper, two sets of data are presented to explore the potential of electric vehicles to contribute to a more sustainable mobility system. First, data from an international Delphi of transport experts shows how a sustainable future can be characterised by different features: efficient internal combustion engine vehicles, electric vehicles, and reduced personal car ownership. Thus electric vehicles are presented as both an opportunity and a threat in relation to sustainable mobility. A second body of empirical material is drawn from interviews with electric vehicle owners, and discusses the drivers and barriers to ownership. Interestingly, participants suggest changing mobility practices associated with electric vehicle ownership, evidenced by decreasing kilometres travelled. The paper concludes by suggesting that there may be potential for electric vehicles to contribute to a sustainable mobility future through modified mobility practices and renewable energy sources in New Zealand.

Learning about Climate: An Exploration of the Socialization of Climate Change

Whilethe term‘‘climatechange’’is highly recognizedby the nonscientific generalpublic, understandings of its manifestations are varied, contrasting, and complex. It is argued that this is because climate change has become simultaneously a physical and a social phenomenon. Thus, climate change is becoming socialized throughnonscientificinterpretation.Researchhasconsideredtherolesofindependentsourcesofinformation used to inform these communities, ranging from media sources to personal experiences. However, little consideration has been made of the interplay between information sources and how these sources are perceived by nonscientificcommunities in termsof trust. This paperpresents a qualitative study of 52ski industry stakeholders in Queenstown, New Zealand. It explores the sources of information used by these communities to construct understandings about climate change, their perceptions of these sources, the dominant interpretive factors, and the interactions between the information sources. It finds that personal experiences of weather are used to interpret other sources of information and are drawn upon to corroborate and reject the existence of climate change and its relevance for their locality. This paper concludes that locally relevant information on climate change is required to ensure that it is applicable to nonscientific realities and lived experiences.

Governing the Race to Automation

Abstract Automated vehicle technologies dominate many visions of future systems of smart mobility. This chapter uses the approach of Transition Management to explore the multi-actor governance processes around automated vehicle technologies in the United Kingdom (UK), with specific attention being paid to the role of the UK government. It shows the relatively comprehensive approach to automated vehicle innovation that has been adopted by the UK government, emerging across multiple domains including the creation of positive discourses around automation, and the facilitation of network building and demonstration projects. Framed by the Transition Management cycle of strategic, tactical, operational and reflexive activities, the chapter argues for greater integration across the levels of the cycle, and experimentation that moves beyond technological capability, to include the heterogeneous publics, in a more diverse set of roles than the current framing of ‘potential technology adopter’. The chapter points to the techno-optimism displayed by governments participating in the international race to vehicle automation, often with dual roles as both producers and consumers, and suggest that greater inclusivity, democracy, diversity and openness in the innovation process may contribute to context sensitive implementation.