Space and place are the first resources of the tourist industry. Tourism is well known to transform the very own place it has built upon. Coastal tourism is a good example of how spaces, through the form of resources like the shore and the sea, turn into a tourist product. However, as climate change is transforming the physical space of the coast, the tourist space will also be transformed on the way to adaptation. On one hand, it will transform how tourism, and tourist, interact in coastal space and, on the other hand, it will also transform the fragile cohabitation of many lands uses on the coastal space ( residential, commercial, industrial, leisure, tourism, etc.,). Shorelines of the St. Lawrence River are at the heart of the tourist activities in Quebec, Canada, but also are spaces that will be strongly affected by climate change. The erosion and coastal flooding will profoundly change the physical space enhanced by tourism. For coastal communities in the periphery, adapting to these changes is crucial for their development, hence the importance of understanding the process of adaptation that will be implemented.
The research explores how climate change, in relation to the discourse of adaptation to climate change, is altering the spatial development of the tourism industry in coastal destinations in the periphery. From a critical perspective, we elaborate a production of space (Lefebvre, 1974; Harvey, 1996) framework using a triadic conception of space to analyze the transformation and (re)production of coastal tourist space within a capitalist accumulation process. The research examines through content analysis the official discourses and stakeholders discourses on tourism and climate change. The key findings suggest that the representation of space carried by the tourism discourses discard the representation of climate change to protect land values, climate change being associated with risk. We also found that the land tenure, public or private, modified the adaptation strategies put forward by the destination and its stakeholders.
