Oceans of Opportunity: Navigating a New Course for Coastal Tourism Planning and Development in Africa and Beyond

Editors

• Senija Causevic, Université Internationale de Rabat
• Manuel Alector Ribeiro, University of Surrey
• Aaron Yankholmes, Nottingham Trent University

Description

Africa's coastal regions remain significantly underrepresented in global tourism research despite comprising 38 coastal nations with extensive marine biodiversity. The gap reflects both historical legacies of colonialism and contemporary academic inequities, leaving African coastal communities marginalized in planning and governance processes. This special issue seeks contributions that move beyond critique toward co-creating regenerative coastal tourism models grounded in vernacular knowledge and local spatial politics.

Coastal tourism planning currently privileges aesthetic conservation and tourist interests over equitable resource distribution and environmental sustainability, often resulting in economic leakage, spatial exclusion, and increased climate vulnerability for local communities. The special issue invites research on governance frameworks, community-led approaches, and planning instruments that address spatial injustices, strengthen local value chains, and balance competing coastal uses including fisheries, conservation, and port development.

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Potential topics

• Coastal tourism planning and development at the land–sea interface
• Planning instruments for coastal tourism (zoning, development controls, permitting, enforcement, accountability)
• Institutional coordination, planning capacity, and multi-level governance (local–regional–national)
• Data gaps, indicators, and monitoring systems for coastal destination performance and carrying capacity
• Cross-sector trade-offs in port and coastal cities (tourism–ports–fisheries–conservation–urban development)
• Spatial justice in coastal tourism development (land tenure, coastal access, displacement, and enclosure)
• Economic leakage, benefit-sharing, and strengthening local value chains (procurement, SMEs, labour linkages, etc.)
• Investment, public-private partnership, ownership, and concession models (including FDI) and implications for local livelihoods
• Financial planning for regenerative coastal tourism, i.e. public finance, climate finance, carbon markets
• Climate risk, adaptation planning, and resilience for coastal tourism infrastructure, ecosystems, and livelihoods
• Water security, resource pressures, and demand management in coastal and island destinations
• Nature-based solutions and coastal ecosystem restoration linked to tourism development (mangroves, dunes, reefs, etc.)
• Community participation, co-management, and community-led coastal governance innovations
• Indigenous knowledge in tourism planning, monitoring, and coastal management
• Tourism linkages with other sectors, i.e. fisheries, marine agriculture, etc. (livelihoods, resource conflicts, governance responses)
• Coastal and maritime heritage tourism (interpretation, ethics, memory, community partnership, connected heritage landscapes, etc)
• Destination diversification beyond enclave resort models (culture, conservation, science-based tourism, etc.)
• Domestic, diaspora/VFR, and intra-African tourism mobilities and their implications for coastal destination planning
• Relational and comparative research
• Connected-place and relational coastal tourism development across sea basins (Africa–Europe, Western Indian Ocean, Africa–Middle East, Africa-West Indies, etc.)
• Political conflict, power relations, and contested governance in coastal tourism development