A fresh, holistic, new and desperate need to understand climate change and tourism in southern Africa

No abstract

THE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES OF INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD: EVIDENCE FROM CULLINAN, SOUTH AFRICA

Industrial heritage is attracting a growing focus within the international expansion of research around heritage tourism. The largest share of literature relates to industrial heritage in developed economies. The aim in this paper is to examine industrial heritage tourism in a developing economy context and specifically the challenges of maximising heritage tourism for local development in South Africa. The analysis focuses on the diamond-mining village of Cullinan in Gauteng Province, South Africa. In terms of methods and sources the analysis combines material from policy documents from the provincial and local government, local tourism data, and visitor trends to the heritage site, a visitor survey and key stakeholder interviews. Overall, the results reveal that the assets of industrial heritage tourism are underperforming in terms of growing the local economy at Cullinan. In interpreting this finding the study shows that the key explanations relate to the capacity constraints on local governments in tourism development, planning and management. The analysis shows that capacity constraints at the level of local government must be addressed if the potential of industrial heritage tourism in South Africa is to be maximised for the future benefit of local economies

Flooded with risks or opportunities: Exploring flooding impacts on tourist accommodation

Climate and weather-related impacts have become widespread particularly affecting the tourism industry. Flooding has gained research attention over the past decade, since the destruction creates many challenges for tourism businesses. Floods are a growing global problem, increasing in terms of frequency of occurrence, property damages, business economic losses, and fatalities. The study aimed to explore the perceived flooding impacts on different types of tourist accommodation. Thus, to determine if floods hindered any tourist bookings, offerings, and tourist length of stay. The exploration verified the possible flood risks to vulnerable accommodation and no adequate adaptation plans. A purposeful sample of 145 tourist accommodation businesses located across three flood-prone regions of the Limpopo Province of South Africa were selected to answer a semi-structured questionnaire combined with telephonic interviews and email responses to put across their flooding experiences from a management perspective. Coherent theme development within the theoretical framework was achieved through content analysis and allowed for the critical discussion of deductive and inductive themes found in the results. Floods during peak-seasons threaten and affect tourist accommodation, leaving them behind in business. Those not affected benefit with increased tourist demand and new opportunities in the hospitality industry. Alongside the destruction of tourism in the Province, were concerns of the provision of flood mapping and flood management plans for tourism businesses. Wider flooding impacts on the environment and the surrounding local communities demonstrates a growing problem for the futur

AusTraits, a curated plant trait database for the Australian flora

We introduce the AusTraits database - a compilation of values of plant traits for taxa in the Australian flora (hereafter AusTraits). AusTraits synthesises data on 448 traits across 28,640 taxa from field campaigns, published literature, taxonomic monographs, and individual taxon descriptions. Traits vary in scope from physiological measures of performance (e.g. photosynthetic gas exchange, water-use efficiency) to morphological attributes (e.g. leaf area, seed mass, plant height) which link to aspects of ecological variation. AusTraits contains curated and harmonised individual- and species-level measurements coupled to, where available, contextual information on site properties and experimental conditions. This article provides information on version 3.0.2 of AusTraits which contains data for 997,808 trait-by-taxon combinations. We envision AusTraits as an ongoing collaborative initiative for easily archiving and sharing trait data, which also provides a template for other national or regional initiatives globally to fill persistent gaps in trait knowledge

A fresh, holistic, new and desperate need to understand climate change and tourism in southern Africa

No abstract

Heritage tourism in the global south: Development impacts of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, South Africa.

Heritage tourism is an increasingly popular form of tourism across many destinations globally. Maximising the opportunities from heritage tourism is a critical policy issue in the global South. Against a backcloth of the rising importance of heritage tourism for local development agendas across the global South this paper seeks to analyse the local impacts of one major new heritage development project operationalised in South Africa, namely the Cradle of Humankind. In the international context this heritage project is a state-led, infrastructure-led initiative introduced into an economically marginal area in search of pro-poor growth. The analysis suggests that currently this anchor project has not reached its anticipated potential for energising local development

AusTraits, a curated plant trait database for the Australian flora

We introduce the AusTraits database - a compilation of values of plant traits for taxa in the Australian flora (hereafter AusTraits). AusTraits synthesises data on 448 traits across 28,640 taxa from field campaigns, published literature, taxonomic monographs, and individual taxon descriptions. Traits vary in scope from physiological measures of performance (e.g. photosynthetic gas exchange, water-use efficiency) to morphological attributes (e.g. leaf area, seed mass, plant height) which link to aspects of ecological variation. AusTraits contains curated and harmonised individual- and species-level measurements coupled to, where available, contextual information on site properties and experimental conditions. This article provides information on version 3.0.2 of AusTraits which contains data for 997,808 trait-by-taxon combinations. We envision AusTraits as an ongoing collaborative initiative for easily archiving and sharing trait data, which also provides a template for other national or regional initiatives globally to fill persistent gaps in trait knowledge