Tuvalu seeks to attract climate change tourists

Vaiaku: From New Zealand you could go half way around the world for the price of a flight to Tuvalu. After stopping in Fiji, you fly due north for three hours on a small turboprop plane and drop down on a sliver of land in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

There may be two attempts if there’s a dog on the runway. When the few flights aren’t due in or out, the tarmac becomes a sports pitch, a walking and jogging strip and children’s playground. But a tour operator Susana Taafaki says tourists do come from all over the world, some to visit historic world war two sites and others who’ve heard about Tuvalu’s fight against the impacts of climate change.

The UN World Tourism Organisation reports the low lying coral atoll nation of just under 11,000 people is the least visited country in the world. Just 2000 people visited in 2016, many of them business people and those involved in aid and development.

Tuvalu’s government now wants to develop a tourism policy that embraces the fight against climate change, getting tourists involved in protective planting for example. Tourism Minister Taukelina Finikaso told a conference in New Zealand last week the new policy should incorporate a rebranding of the country’s tourism sector in response to the climate crisis. “We’re trying to brand our tourism according to climate change in such a way that we can also develop some responses to climate change like when tourists come to Tuvalu, for them to participate in planting of mangroves and other trees that can help save the landscape from being washed away,” he said.