Scenario Planning for Low Carbon Tourism City: A Case Study of Nan

Abstract

Industrialization alongside urbanization is proceeding rapidly in worldwide that tend to generate massive greenhouse gas emissions. The conflict among rapid urbanization and sustainable development will become increasingly serious. Moreover, the current model of urbanization looks unsustainable for transition to a low-carbon city. Ecotourism is one of the sustainable development approach for tourism city to achieve the low carbon city target. This concept provides many benefits to the environment, economies and local people, especially in developing countries in ASEAN, such as Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Nan Province has been a popular tourist destination in Thailand over the past few years. Nan aimed to develop province to be ecotourism city and promoting sustainable natural resource management and conservation. This province risks failing to meet ecotourism target due to a rapid growth of tourism. In order to minimize the risks of ecotourism development in Nan, scenario planning was selected as an important tool to help Nan province to prepare and plan for the future development. Four scenarios were designed to present plausible alternative futures of Nan under particular assumption of key drivers and important uncertainties. STEEP analysis was selected to identify the key driving forces to include within the scenarios. In addition, the indicators for monitoring development of low carbon tourism city were also proposed.