Checking In with Professor James Higham

Last week the first cruise ships of the new season arrived back into New Zealand ports. The New Zealand media tend to mark the return of cruise ships with excitement. But many are unhappy about cruise ships visiting their port communities. So what are the issues – and why are views so divided? 

We have seen some remarkable advances in space transportation in recent days and months. But space flight risks the destruction of both terrestrial and celestial environments, through extension into the cosmos of economic systems that have contributed to inequality and climate catastrophe on Earth. These risk justify very careful consideration, because the stakes couldn’t be higher.

As this years United Nations Climate Change Conference – COP29 - in Baku approaches next month, it is timely to ask how progress towards decarbonising tourism is going. The answer is, not nearly as quickly as required. A big part of the problem is that we lack the coordinated approach to tourism that is needed to advance urgent sector transformation.

DNA has opened up new avenues of research in genealogy, human evolution, and criminal forensics among others. So what are the links between DNA and sustainable tourism? In this episode, I consider the impact DNA research and technology may have on sustainable tourism - specifically sex tourism where exploitation of women is rife.

High carbon lifestyles are a driver of climate change and tourism is a prominent feature of high carbon lifestyles. Carbon offsetting emerged as a possible solution almost 20 years ago. Airlines began to offer offsetting as an option for travellers to resolve their personal air travel emissions, but it never really took off. Despite becoming central to many airlines' environmental commitments, very few passengers ever opted to offset their emissions. So what is carbon offsetting? What are its merits and where has it got us?

You may have seen that Wizz Air recently ran a promotion for the sale of 10,000 ‘all you can fly’ packages. This triggered a lot of debate online particularly among members of the public who are concerned about climate change and recognise the need to reduce rather than unnecessarily increase demand for air travel. This raises interesting questions about how accepting people are of the idea of unlimited flying, and how receptive people are to changing their own personal travel behaviours.

In the fourth episode of Checking In, I consider regenerative tourism. Lots has been spoken and written about the so-called tourism reset after COVID19 and the emergence of the concept of regenerative tourism. But what is regenerative tourism and what makes it any different from the tourism that we have now? Is it little more than fanciful thinking or does it have real potential to allow us to rethink the relationship between tourism, people and place?

In Episode 3 of Checking In, I talk about the significant increase in the International Visitor and Conservation Levy that the New Zealand coalition government has recently announced. This has generated a lot of angry reaction from industry, particularly Tourism Industry Aotearoa, who think it will be bad for business. But it is worth looking at a bit more closely so that we can move beyond political positions on tourism growth and look at the facts dispassionately.