See It Before It’s Too Late? Last-Chance Travel Lists and Climate Change

In an era of rapidly increasing human population and global travel, ‘last-chance tourism’ is attracting considerable media attention (Dawson, Lemelin, Stewart, & Taillon, 2015). This phenomenon is defined by scholars as commercial tourism that exploits ‘vanishing landscapes or icescapes, and/or disappearing natural and/or social heritage’ (Lemlin, Dawson, Stewart, Maher, & Lueck, 2010, p. 478). Many last-chance destinations and experiences are ones at risk from climate change—polar bear viewing in Canada, the ice-capped peak of Mount Kiliminjaro in Tanzania, the glaciers of Greenland, and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (e.g. Frew, 2008, 2012; Lemelin, Dawson, Stewart, Maher, & Lueck, 2010; Piggott-McKellar & McNamara, 2016).