Climate Change Impacts on Tourism in the Mediterranean

Roberto Roson and Martina Sartori

No 4624, EcoMod2012 from EcoMod

Abstract: The European project WASSERMed addresses issues of water availability and climate change in the Mediterranean. This paper illustrates the findings obtained in WASSERMed about impacts on tourism. The methodology is based on a bottom-up strategy. A micro-model has been developed, forecasting tourism flows on the basis of (among other variables) a Tourism Comfort Index, taking into account a mix of climate variables, like temperature, sunlight, precipitations, humidity, wind. This model is used to forecast changes in tourism flow at the reference year 2050. To this end, climate scenarios based on downscaled regional climate models, produced by the WASSERMed project, are used. Variations in the number of tourists are translated into changes in total tourism expense and interpreted as exogenous shocks in a conventional CGE model. Therefore, simulation exercises can be conducted to assess the macroeconomic-wide effects of changing tourism patterns. In addition, as the general equilibrium model employs satellite data on water consumption, it is also possible to assess the impact on water resources, to shed some light about conflicting uses of water, especially between agriculture and tourism. The model can also be used to estimate virtual water flows, that is water implicitly "embedded" in international trade flows. This helps in highlighting how water availability determines comparative advantage and how water scarcity can be partly alleviated through a better allocation of resources. See above See above

Keywords: Mediterranean; Forecasting; nowcasting; Energy and environmental policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-07-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://ecomod.net/system/files/tourimp.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Climate Change Impacts on Tourism in the Mediterranean (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ekd:002672:4624

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