S2 EP2: Can Last Chance Tourism help us think more about the environment?

Quick, book a trip to see polar bears, glaciers, rainforests before they disappear forever! Can "last chance tourism" help sensitise us to environmental issues or is it just about self-gratification at any cost? Paul interviews geographer Dr Salim Emmanuel and tries to find out what last chance tourism is really all about.

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Transcript

PHJ: Last week I travelled to the disappearing Rhone Glacier in Switzerland and talked to people who’d come to see it. And it made me wonder whether so-called “last chance tourism” can be about caring for the environment and might even increase that sense of caring? Or is it something a bit more selfish – just a self-gratification – to be able to say you’ve seen something that will be increasingly difficult, ultimately impossible to see in the future. 

To understand more, I’ve stayed in Switzerland to talk to Emmanuel - an expert on Last Chance Tourism in Europe 

ES: I am Emmanuel Salim, and I am a geographer working in the University of Toulouse and also in the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. 

PHJ: Thanks so much for joining us Emmanuel – can I just start by clarifying what Last Chance Tourism is – and does your research tell us this is what’s happening in the Alps?  

Most of the literature talks about last chance tourism as an urgency to see - also as a privilege to be  - the last to see something disappearing. So we have worked with that around with glaciers especially in the Alps. The question was about how glacier retreat and the very, very huge changes in the landscape can have an impact on the people who visit the place - and also why they are coming to see this landscape. Because in the past it was for high aesthetic reasons mainly. So we conducted a survey onsite, and we saw that this dynamic of “last chance” exists. So for 50%, this motivation is rather high. So it's also that there is some motivation regarding not only the urgency, but also with this idea of coming to see the change in the glacier from year to year, how it changes year after year, how this glacier and the glacier landscape can be a way to better understand what climate change is and how climate change concretely affects a place. The last dimension was about the idea to witness - people saying, “okay, this glacier is important for me and I am here to see it because I want to share with me with my little children” or things like that. So it was also this idea of witnessing the glacier, coming with the next generation to show them the glacier before it disappears. So basically, there are these four dimensions of motivation that were related to the urgency, the idea to come observe the changes, the idea of understanding and the idea of witnessing the place.

PHJ: OK – so you’ve been able to unpack this idea of last chance tourism, at least here in the alps, into these four dimensions – and it does seem that this is a big part of the reason why people are coming to see these glaciers. But does seeing it effect people positively – does it give them more pro-environmental intentions?

ES: So yes in term of research, we do another survey. The main aim of this survey was to try to understand how what we can see in the glacier landscape can have an influence on the intention to act for the environment. The main result I think here is that it is clear that the more people are understanding what's happened in the landscape - that means that they are able to understand why there is, for example, some rock covering the glacier or why there is some moraine or why this is some rockfall we can see. The more they are understanding those different elements, the more they are willing to act. So that was quite an interesting result because it shows that it's very important in this place to communicate about the consequences of climate change.

PHJ: Yeah so that makes sense that it’s not enough just to visit these places you actually have to understand what’s going on but it sounds like good news if that understanding then relates to forming positive intentions – but do they come away understanding more? I mean there here interpretation centres at some glaciers, not at the one I visited – but there were notices along the path I walked down to see the glacier, explaining the significance of what I was seeing in terms of climate change – although clearly not everyone was reading them…

ES: Here we had a very disappointing result because we did some interviews before people are visiting the place and after. And in one place we studied, people before (not everybody, but) some people said before going to the interpretation center “okay, I know climate change is happening. I know climate change is human induced. I know we have responsibility on it. It's okay, I, I know all of that.” They visit the place, the interpretation center and, after the visit, they said “oh, but finally, I don't know, because I thought glacier retreat was caused by climate change. And now in this place I saw that there is a retreat of the glacier in the past advances the glacier in the past. So, so there is a past glaciation. So finally, I don't know, what is my impact?” “What is climate change impact on this dynamic? Is it really human and or is it something natural?” 

So it was very disappointing because before visit people said, “yes, I'm sure I know”. And after they said “oh, but I don't know, because finally it's complicated.” And we found that it's really because in that particular place, I have to say it's not everywhere like that, but in that particular place, where the information provided in this interpretation center was about last glaciation 10,000 years ago, Little Ice Age and, and current retreat, but without any contextual element to say “okay current retreat is not the same as the little ice age”. It's not the same course and it's different and we have responsibility on it. So there is a lack of this element in this place that leads people to be confused.

PHJ: Ah yes – the seeds of ambiguity that I mentioned in the last episode. But then if visiting these sites isn’t helping people act more for the environment, then it seems such a paradox that people are burning carbon to go and see places before the carbon emissions cause them to disappear. Is Last Chance Tourism essentially a paradox pursued by people who aren’t thinking things through?

ES: In the Canadian Arctic, there is a place called Churchill that is very well known for polar bear viewing, polar bear viewing. And in 2010, something like that, tourism stakeholders start to communicate about this idea, idea of “okay, come to see the polar bear be before they're gone”. So really putting this last chance argument for the tourism purpose, and the only way to reach this place is to take the plane -  so high carbon intensity. And so we saw that a lot of people come with this very high motivation of “last chance”. So first it's paradoxical because you come with a plane to see a natural feature that is disappearing by climate change. But more than that, we also saw that the more people have this motivation about “last chance” high, the more they are aware about climate change and its impact on the environment. So that means that people who are doing last chance tourism are people that are already aware of their own impact. So even, if they are aware, they still want to go a thousand kilometers away to see the future before it's gone. So there is these two paradoxes. Yeah.

PHJ: I mean for me I wouldn’t be surprised if  people who didn’t care about the environment still wanted to see the bears and were prepared burn that much carbon to see them, I could imagine those people might even be disappointed if the bears didn’t disappear soon because it might devalue their experience – so sure, let’s dump more carbon in the atmosphere and go see them. But with these polar bears – and this a more clear cut example of last chance tourism isn’t it – because it’s being advertised as such unlike glaciers in the alps – it is drawing environmentally aware people even though they must know it’s very carbon intensive going there and that goes against their beliefs. They’re still doing it. That is fascinating psychologically – but do we, do the polar bears really want them visiting at all? 

ES: Oh, I don't know. I mean, yeah, if we want to protect polar bear, if you want to protect the glacier, we just need to reduce our carbon emission. So by doing this kind of thing, it's certainly …..one element I think is important is that there is plenty of studies that show that people who are very environmentally active, when they go on vacations, they forget. They, you know, and it was also in our study, because we have these different intentions to act….but there is one intention that where people say “we don't want to do anything about that” is when it's talking about reducing distant travel for holiday. So people agreed on the other factors, but not on the idea to have less during their holiday in a way. And so I think this explains this paradox because it can be people that are very active in their everyday life. They're trying to live with the lowest carbon footprint they can. And but they said, okay, we are on vacation this summer. We are really interested in the environment. We heard about polar bear, we want to see them. So, okay, we are doing our best all day, all year long, and so for our vacation, we will do what we want. And it's really something we see. There is plenty of studies showing this phenomenon.

PHJ: Oh ok – so there might be some sort of holiday effect here – so taking another plane is viewed another one of those one-off or quite infrequent other indulgences we take on holiday …but if we’re going to see more last chance tourism, is there anything that could be done to make it work more for the environment?

ES: I think it's interesting to see that people also want to know and also want to understand. So my idea to have more, most of the benefits we can for from this dynamic is to try to give people who are visiting the place the key to act when they are going home. And for that, we have a, a concept that was developed by, by a friend geographer called Rémy Knafou. And it’s called reflexive tourism. And so I think we could do the same for places that are affected by climate change, saying, okay we are close to a glacier. We know why the glacier is retreating. We know what will be the consequence. We know that climate change and climate actions are not sufficient to reach the Paris agreement. And we know the dynamics that lead to inactions. So we provide this information so when you come home, you know better about what you can maybe do as an individual and maybe also as a citizen in the politic system in general. Because one limit to that will be to say, okay, but it's not only about individuals to take actions. It's also a political problem.

PHJ: Yes I think we often do focus down on individuals on this podcast – and there is so much that requires political change – and actually I was reminded of that on my return from the Glacier when I encountered a flash protest outside the parliament in Bern – at the Bundesplatz  - about the need to reduce trucks on alpine roads and use freight trains instead. I’ve put some images of that on the web-site if anyone’s interested. But does tourism around the glaciers feature in the politics very much?

ES: But there is also a new dynamic I think because we talk about last chance tourism, but now I think there is a dynamic of glaciers that come from “last chance” dynamic to a kind of “dark tourism” dynamics. Because there is more and more places, more and more glaciers where people organize funerals, for example, or commemorate the disappearance of glaciers. In 2023 in Switzerland, there is this initiative for the glacier – the Glacier Initiative to try to bring the Paris Agreement objective into the climate law of Switzerland. And by organizing, hiking around glaciers, they finally do it. And so we see, in a way, that glacier are becoming places where people commemorate remember past glaciers and that glacier also become a political flag to protect the environment in a political way. So just some insights to say that maybe last chance tourism, with this idea to see before it's gone, to understand - will transform into a kind of dark tourism when we go to commemorate to try to connect each other and to defend our political will.

PHJ: That is fascinating because recent research has confirmed that walking in nature improves our affect – not so much our cognition in terms of our thinking ability – but our feelings and emotions become more positive – and its feelings that are the basis for our motivation and they have a lot of  influence on our decision making – so yes - having political meetings at glaciers and in nature and involving hiking - that all makes perfect sense according to the psychology. 

So well it’s been great talking today to you today Emmanuel – good luck with your research – it really is interesting stuff.

ES: Thank you very much – goodbye….

PHJ So I think I’ve discovered that people’s motivations to engage in last chance tourism don’t have to be always  entirely selfish  – but they are complex – and whether their experience can provide any overall benefit to the environment may depend on how well that experience is designed to help connect mind, brain and planet.