Les îles touristiques à la merci du changement climatique : une évaluation par un indice synthétique de vulnérabilité physique

The aim of this article is to assess the vulnerability of small, tourism-reliant island territories to the consequences of climate change. These areas, regardless of their economic specialization, are structurally exposed to the consequences of climate change. Furthermore, tourism is by nature an activity that is highly dependent on geoclimatic conditions. The combination of insularity and tourism is therefore likely to make these places more vulnerable to climate change than other territories. However, the physical consequences of climate change are not spatially homogeneous, either over the different regions of the world or within the same region. They are largely dependent on the initial geographical and climatic characteristics (regardless of human and economic aspects or the development model chosen). In order to analyze this heterogeneity, we use the Physical Vulnerability to Climate Change Index (PVCCI) recently developed by FERDI in order to aggregate the different risks linked to this phenomenon. This index is applied to an increased sample of 250 economies, including 100 sovereign or affiliated small islands. Our results show that small, tourism-reliant island economies are in fact significantly more vulnerable to climate change than other groups, and therefore their development model cannot be sustained in the absence of mitigation and adaptation policies