Robert McLachlan • Jan 06, 2021 •
I don’t know Taupō well. Even though I stop off there from time to time, I’m always on the way to somewhere else. Usually Taupō means making a hot water puddle in the gritty sand followed by a swim in the lake, noticing with bemusement and resignation the traffic, the parasailing, and the hole-in-one game. Sometimes a random, generic motel. Read More
Guest Author • Nov 26, 2020 •
James Higham, University of Otago and Hazel Tucker, University of Otago Raise your hand if you’ve ever travelled for weeks or months as a backpacker on a limited daily budget. Keep your hand up if you were made welcome in the places you visited on your OE, enjoyed chance encounters and experienced the generosity of strangers. And did those … Read More
Robert McLachlan • Sep 25, 2020 •
Qantas Airlines’ 7-hour “flight to nowhere”, that sold out in 10 minutes with prices from A$787 to A$3787, seemed like a sick joke to climate advocates. Apart from the waste of fuel and the pointless emissions, passengers would be able to see first-hand, from a plane just like those that carried coronavirus around the world so effectively, the sweeping devastation … Read More
Guest Author • Sep 11, 2020 •
Chantal Denise Pagel, Auckland University of Technology; Mark Orams, Auckland University of Technology, and Michael Lueck, Auckland University of Technology Three people were injured last month in separate humpback whale encounters off the Western Australia coast. The incidents happened during snorkelling tours on Ningaloo Reef when swimmers came too close to a mother and her calf. Swim encounters with … Read More
Guest Author • Jul 03, 2020 •
James Higham, University of Otago Unprecedented border closures and the domestic lockdown have paralysed New Zealand’s $40.9 billion a year tourism industry. In the process, the vulnerability of the sector to external shocks and the tenuous nature of tourism employment have been exposed. While New Zealand’s handling of the pandemic has been hailed as a global masterclass, and the … Read More
Guest Author • May 07, 2020 •
Dave Heatley “Shut the borders” is a natural first reaction to an external threat. It makes a lot of sense in the early stages of a pandemic, when those arriving at the border are more likely to be infected than those within the country. But what if that’s no longer the situation? After a country lifts its internal restrictions … Read More
Eric Crampton • Dec 20, 2019 •
Eloise Gibson covers the carbon costs of tourism over at Newsroom: But in reality: “value-led tourism growth may actually worsen those pressures that are linked with consumption. Higher-value visitors, by definition, consume more goods and services, all of which have an associated greenhouse gas and solid waste footprint. To the extent that these goods and services are relatively energy … Read More
Guest Author • Dec 17, 2019 •
Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, University of South Australia and James Higham, University of Otago In the aftermath of the tragedy at Whakaari/White Island on December 9, many are analysing the risks of adventure tourism, particularly volcano tourism, and asking pointed questions. It is a sensitive time, with 15 people now confirmed dead, many hospitalised in critical condition, and two bodies yet … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 11, 2018 •
Rowena Christiansen, University of Melbourne This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Take it from me is a new series in Science and Technology, where we find an expert to provide a personal but informed perspective on a topical issue. Elon Musk’s SpaceX reportedly has two people signed up for a … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 01, 2018 •
By Peter de Lange A recent survey of Rarotonga’s little plants – the liverworts and mosses – has established that all is not well in the volcanic island’s forests. The plants, often dubbed the ‘canaries in the cage’ of the plant world because of their sensitivity to ecosystem change, are drowning under an onslaught of weeds that have spread from … Read More