Abstract
The nexus of tourism and climate change is one that has encountered increasing academic interest and
exploration by range of disciplines, in particular with prominent contributions made by geographers.
Southern Africa is a region that is particularly vulnerable to the long-term impacts of climate change. It
is against this background that this paper examines key debates from the growing international literature
on climate change in order to identify research imperatives including for African scholars. Arguably, in
analysing the potential outcomes and impacts of climate change on the tourism industry worldwide, and
specifically the manner in which a number of tourism dependent businesses and by proxy tourism
dependent communities and livelihoods may be increasingly vulnerable to climate change related
stresses, adaptive actions which aim to reduce or counter such vulnerability become essential. Overall,
as argued in this analysis, expanding the research agenda relating to tourism enterprises and climate
change and most especially around the need for ‘adaptive pathways’ is of critical importance for tourism
scholarship.