Assignment by municipal management

In addition to not interpreting climate change as an urgent issue for the ongoing operations at the tourist offices, the tourist offices have not been assigned to work on climate change risk governance.

All three respondents claim that they have not discussed climate change in work context. However, all three of them note that the staff has spoken about climate change in private context as a result of reading the newspaper. Where Boholm (2003: 174) speaks about “experience-far” risks that are understood by “collective narratives”, in the case of the tourist offices climate change might be termed as a “work-experience-far” risk that is accessed through the narratives created by the media. Thus, it seems that the issue of climate change has not yet been anchored in the tourist offices‟ operations through an explicit assignment.

Further, in the municipal network meeting with Västhamn the meeting participants point out several times that the network of tourist offices is required to work in growth projects and will only receive funding when collaborating in these growth projects. Thus, the network‟s budget is necessarily bound to projects that imply an increased mobility. However, which kind of mobility is aimed at, if long haul travellers or national, regional and local tourists, is not mentioned in the context. Concluding from the interview with Västhamn, however, there is reason to believe that the form and distance of transportation is not further addressed by the municipal management, as climate change is not a topic for discussion in the work context of the tourist office.

The absence of an assignment to work upon climate change becomes also visible when the tourist offices speak about their mission as tourist offices. As has been mentioned earlier, all three respondents from the tourist offices underline that the tourist offices fulfil the aim of promoting the municipality and attracting visitors. None of the respondents mentions that their operations need to take climate change into account in any way. Rather in contrary, the respondent from Mittenstad defends business tourism, which is depending on flying, as being positive for Mittenstad because tourism generates tax money. The notion that aviation is regarded as the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions from tourism, contributing with 40% of the total emissions from tourism, is not taken into consideration (Gössling & Hall, 2008: 145; Scott et al., 2010: 398). The instance where flying is defended is an expression of Hilgartner‟s (1992) notion that risk objects are dealt with in order to eliminate either the risk or the object from the context. Here it is the suggested risk object emissions that is eliminated in the argumentation.

Another hint that the tourist offices are not assigned to work upon climate change is given in the presentation of Östenvik‟s forthcoming tourism strategy. During the presentation it is said that the tourist office works according to the municipality‟s overarching target to increase employment, in their specific case employment in tourism. It is also said that the tourist office aims to increase the flow of visitors, and that the destination wants to participate in the national and regional growth trends in tourism. During the presentation of the tourist strategy for Östenvik one presenter mentions that climate change is an issue that the destination needs to be conscious about. However, the fact that business tourists arriving by airplane are appointed as a new target group in the strategy is left uncommented in terms of climate change. Yet, aviation is well-known as one of the substantial contributors to global climate change (Gössling & Hall, 2008; Scott et al., 2010). Arguing that the tourism strategy is developed in collaboration with the local government and municipal management, the absence of endeavours

to integrate climate change practically seems to be approved by the politicians and the administrative management.

Viewing the tourist offices‟ descriptions of their mission in the context of municipal management as a whole, the way the municipal management deals with the issue of climate change is a case of “multiple goals” (Hutter, 2005: 69). The municipal management selects the assignments for the single operations. On the assignment to derive organizational value from promoting the municipality and attracting visitors, the tourist offices do their best to reach that aim, regardless of other goals in the municipality. This leads to the paradox that the tourist offices carry out an operation that might contradict the endeavour of other operations, e.g., the work of the climate office to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and manifests limitations for cross sectional engagement.

In conclusion the municipal management seems not to include the tourist offices in any form of climate change risk governance (Van Asselt & Renn, 2011). The tourist offices are not given an explicit assignment to deal with climate change. Hence, as the example shows non-inclusion is not always a matter of “silencing” players (Lidskog et al., 2010: 26), it can also be matter of letting players continue with business as usual.

As the municipal management appears not to encourage all operations in the municipal administration to collaborate on climate change risk governance, a joint understanding of climate change risk governance is not developed in the rows of the municipal administration (Boholm et al., forthcoming). Consequently, the operations of the tourist offices remain in their specific work sphere, unexposed to influences that might cast a spotlight of meaning on climate change (Wenger, 1998; 2003; Boholm et al., forthcoming).