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Tourism, aid, and climate change: a structural analysis of climate resilient development potential
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DOI：10.1080/17565529.2026.2668631.png)
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Abstract
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The urgency of meaningful climate action demands transformational change that integrates adaptation, mitigation, and inclusive development. Development aid plays a critical role in enabling such change. Tourism has long been promoted as a driver of economic growth, offering an entry point for climate resilient development (CRD), yet its role remains underexplored. This paper examines how tourism-related aid engages with climate change and whether it holds transformational potential. Drawing on the d-portal platform, 89 projects were analysed to assess key drivers, the positioning of tourism and climate objectives, and transformation features. Adaptation dominates, often focused on building disaster resilience, while mitigation is largely confined to forest carbon sinks, with limited decarbonizing investment. A transformation index, comprised of indicators for cross-sector complexity, inclusiveness, and deliberate transformation, shows that most projects remain incremental. A structural divide between smaller bilateral and multilateral projects reveals that transformational potential is concentrated in country-to-country interventions, while larger programmes tend to reinforce existing institutional logics rather than challenge them. The paper identifies the personal sphere of transformation as the critical missing dimension and argues that deliberate design choices, across both funding types, are needed to advance tourism's contribution to climate-resilient, low-carbon, and just development.
Keywords:
Tourism
Climate resilient development
transformation
aid
mainstreaming principles
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