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REFERENCES Jafari, J. 2003 Research and Scholarship. Journal of Tourism Studies 14:6–17. Thoma, A. 2000 Presentation on Floor. 1st International Meeting of Tourism NGOs on Biodiversity, in preparation for the Fifth Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Berlin, Germany.

Assigned 1 November 2008. Submitted 25 January 2008. Accepted 25 January 2008 doi:10.1016/j.annals.2008.01.005

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 614–616, 2008 Printed in Great Britain

Tourism and Climate Change: Risks and Opportunities Susanne Becken and John E. Hay. Channel View 2007, xix + 329 pp (figures, tables, references, index) £24.95 Pbk. ISBN 3-9781845410667 Caroline Winter La Trobe University, Australia This book is the first in Channel View Publications’ series, Climate Change: Economies and Society. It is a welcome addition given the dearth of climate change studies in the tourism literature, and it acknowledges that the time has come to move beyond mere rhetoric and begin developing solutions to this global problem. The first three chapters provide an overview of tourism and climate change, with each of the following seven dealing with a specific aspect. The book opens with a short introduction that encourages leaders to take up the challenge of helping individuals deal with climate change. Chapter 2 provides a detailed but concise description of the tourism and climate systems and their inter-relationship. This is followed by four case studies (island states, Alpine Europe, the insurance sector, and international aviation) that illustrate the complexity and diversity of the challenges facing the industry. The next chapter is an excellent overview of tourism, including the main social trends of global tourism from the perspective of climate change. Chapter 5 discusses and explains the potential impacts that climate change will have on the main regions of the planet and thus situates tourism as only one of the activities contributing to this global phenomenon. Greenhouse accounting, a topic barely covered elsewhere in the literature, is described in chapter 6. This is followed by a discussion of the complexities of greenhouse gas mitigation, with more than half of the chapter being devoted to transport. The section on aviation, which links with

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the aviation case study in chapter 3, is especially illuminating and an excellent summary of a complex issue. The remainder of the chapter deals with methods to reduce emissions from accommodation and activity based organizations. The authors then turn to the issue of risk and how tourism can manage and adapt. This discussion leads into chapter 9, which details the imperative for policy and decision making. It provides an overview of the main organizations concerned with climate change at the global level, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as specific tourism bodies. A short concluding chapter rounds out the book. One of the difficulties in dealing with climate change is the complexity, breadth, and interrelationships between human and natural systems, and in this respect, the book has taken on an enormous task. The content presented is so extensive that the volume can also be read as a guide to the myriad issues confronting the tourism industry with respect to climate change. This is where the book makes a significant contribution towards delivering on its stated aims of building knowledge and understanding of the topic, in the hope of encouraging key players (such as policy- and decisionmakers in public and private arenas) to engage with climate change. The book is targeted at undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, and professionals, but it would also suit an interested general public readership. Undergraduates will appreciate the small but detailed sections (such as the explanations of energy in chapter 7), while postgraduates and other researchers will benefit from the number of research questions that are raised. A significant effort has been made to assist the reader with a number of very useful tools (included in the book are 68 figures, 45 tables, and 24 short case studies in text boxes). A concise bullet point summary is provided at the beginning of each chapter. The reference section provides an excellent list of tourism research on the topic and on a wide range of other contributions. The book does not presume the reader has a great deal of knowledge about tourism or climate change, and almost any serious reader could take up this book and obtain a reasonable understanding of the main issues. The diversity of information provided in the book requires concentration and effort from the reader and, in places, it is somewhat challenging to read. This is not a serious criticism, however, as the book reflects the nature and complexity of climate change. The index is very lean and given the breadth of the content, could be significantly expanded. Overall the book is not written as a critical analysis of tourism and climate change. Some issues, such as the impacts on the developing world, are mentioned only briefly. Radical changes to the current status of tourism are not really suggested. Much of the content is focused on Europe which may not reflect the situation in other parts of the world. With the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s ‘‘Fourth Assessment Report’’ and its confirmation of human intervention in the global climate system, the release of Becken and Hay’s book is timely. It will provide a companion to Tourism, Recreation, and Climate Change edited by C. Michael Hall and James Higham (2005), also published by Channel View. Becken and Hay’s book sets the scene and provides direction for a research agenda and for policy and other practical alternatives to help adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. The authors have managed to pull together a vast amount of information in such a way that the reader is inspired to contribute to solutions, whether that is by learning, researching, or planning for the future. Most importantly, they provide for a way forward. Caroline Winter: School of Sport, Tourism, and Hospitality Management, La Trobe University, Bundoora Vic 3086, Australia. Email

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REFERENCES Hall C.M., and J. Higham 2005 Tourism, Recreation, and Climate Change. Clevedon: Channel View.

Assigned 26 October 2007. Submitted 30 January 2008. Accepted 30 January 2008. doi:10.1016/j.annals.2008.01.004

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 616–618, 2008 Printed in Great Britain

Pro-Poor Tourism: Who Benefits? Perspectives on Tourism and Poverty Reduction Edited by C.M. Hall. Channel View Publications 2007, xxi + 167 pp (tables, figures, author and subject indices) $69.95 Hbk. ISBN 1-84541-075-0 Stephen Wearing University of Technology, Sydney, Australia This collection of case studies examines a form of tourism intended to benefit poor people and provides a platform to present ideas in an area drawing increasing attention from stakeholders such as the World Tourism Organization, the UN, governments, industry, and NGOs. Pro-poor tourism is also an integral component of many sustainable development strategies in less developed countries. The book opens with a critique by Hall that avoids overstating the case for propoor tourism, [y]et whether tourism is a means of reducing poverty gaps beyond isolated instances or is perhaps symptomatic of a causal relationship, at least with respect to the broader scope of north-south trade, needs to be debated much further than is presently the case in tourism policy circles (p. 7). The book’s seven chapters provide a context and history of the practice of propoor tourism. However, Hall, forever the pragmatist, does not provide a conceptual context for the study area. This is a little disappointing for a topic as important and interesting as this. Weibring Zhao and Brent Richie develop a research framework that ‘‘synthesises multiple perspectives’’ (p. 9) through a discussion of various issues and the articulation of a model relating themes of anti-poverty tourism research. They acknowledge the model is only a ‘‘skeleton of this emerging research field’’ (p. 28), but it does provide useful insights. Unfortunately, it fails to pull in research in related areas such as human geography, geopolitics, Third World politics, globalization, finance, and environmental studies.