Project Description
“What will the future look like?”, is a question many people ask themselves, out of curiosity and uncertainty. This is also true for researchers wanting to assess what the effects of any current practices can have on the future. Spaces that show intense and diverse use or even exploitation are especially interesting for analyzing their possible future. Therefore, this thesis attempts to create narratives to show what the Mediterranean could look like by 2100 under several scenarios that are influenced by current tourism practices, trends and other socio-economic factors, combined with frameworks that have been previously used for climate scenarios. The narratives will then be able to be used for further research involving the interplay between climate and tourism. The SSP (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) framework is used to assess the possible impacts of tourism trends on the Mediterranean. This research attempts to show the polarizing possibilities for the area and the sector, by basing the narratives for SSP1 (Climate Changed) and SSP5 (S.O.S) on the SSP’s that were created for Europe in an earlier research. Sustainability and conscious behavior in SSP1 is strongly opposed to destructive and consumptive actions displayed in SSP5. This large gap in possible futures stresses the unpredictability and vulnerability of tourism in the Mediterranean.
Author: T.L. Ketellapper (2019)