As we review COP30 guidelines for climate action in tourism and the summit’s Tourism Day-related reports, Equality in Tourism Associate Lucy Atieno reflects on an important question: do these tools reflect the lived realities of people working in tourism destinations worldwide? Particularly, are we listening to women’s voices and addressing their specific needs?
Tourism’s Climate Action Guidelines
We appreciate tourism’s voice and contributions to global climate talks, especially its climate action guidelines which are key to uniting the sector in climate action. For COP30, these guidelines are outlined in related documents, notably the Destination Stewardship: A Guide to Action on Climate Change, 2025. This report refers to the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism, which is the current guideline across destinations globally.
The stewardship report applies a community-centred lens to the five strategic pathways of Glasgow Declaration: Measurement, Decarbonisation, Regeneration, Collaboration, and Financing. In parallel, broader discussions on regenerative travel, such as those in the White Paper on Future-Proofing Tourism, offers recommendations for DMOs and policymakers that would benefit from the inclusion of gender considerations.
Seeing how they extend or improve the core guidelines of Glasgow Initiative for Climate Action, raises the question for us on what a gender lens would contribute to climate action in tourism, along these pathways.
How could a gender perspective fit in and strengthen them?
The Gap Between Guidelines and Women’s Realities
Gender is not addressed directly in either of the two reports. Nonetheless, their guidelines target destinations affected by climate pressures, such as coastal destinations, inland conservation areas, and places recovering from conflict. In all these contexts, unequal gender relations shape everyday tourism work in a multitude of ways.
Coastal landscapes and conservation areas are characteristic of prime tourism destinations across Africa. A study from Namibia explains that in many community-based natural resource management in conservation areas, women remain largely excluded from decision making. Meanwhile, men control more lucrative natural resource and wildlife jobs, limiting women’s capacity to adapt to climate change and benefit from conservation-linked tourism.
Similarly, women working in the blue economy sector, including coastal and marine-based tourism, still face major barriers. Even when educated and skilled, many remain in low wage, low status roles, with little influence over decisions that shape their work and livelihoods – a pattern highlighted in a 2024 World Bank feature. While they work without strong protections, they are the first to be exposed to climate induced risks, like income loss.
Here we see a gap between the suggested actions and what climate pressures mean for women in these destinations. This is even more so in destinations recovering from conflict, where social strain creates uneven opportunities and restricts women’s access to resources, weakening their capacity for climate action.
Would it be thoughtful for guidelines extended to such destinations to engage with how gender and climate interact in such difficult circumstances? Overlooking such realities puts to question the sector’s ability to guide fair and grounded climate responses.
Aligning Tourism Planning with Gender Concerns
Of course, the topic of gender was given a dedicated slot at COP30. Yet, there is no information about whether any gender-focused outcomes from Brazil, such as high-level and civil society events focusing on gender, were translated into tourism-sector policies or guidelines. If most gender discussions sit outside the tourism space, how can the sector make sure that the concerns of women inside the sector are recognised within tourism planning itself?
This response is an invitation for tourism’s global level guidance on climate action to ensure the sector’s planning reflects the places, people, and pressures that define tourism landscapes. We see the COP30 Tourism Day outputs as a starting point – an opportunity to connect these global tools to the local realities where climate risk and gender intersect within the sector.
Read next: Tourism and Climate Change: The Need for a Gender-Based Research Agenda
