I know the islands well. Tourism is still only a third of the economy there. International shipping and agriculture sustained the islands for hundreds of years, prior to the 1970s when cheap jet air travel came of age. They import a lot now, but can in theory totally self-sustain. Each of the islands has a very different biosphere suited to different farming.

We should pay attention to the Canary Islands, the rest of the planet is the coal mine, The problem is identified as "tourism" but their relation to the global economics within a climate change context is the real story.

> 13.9 million people visited the islands

Nearly all of them flew there. A few passenger cruise ships stop by.

> a water emergency is already been declared on Tenerife

They've a housing crisis, a cost of living crisis and now 36 degrees in April after a dry winter.

Most of Tenerife is volcanic and the plant life around tourist areas is heavily irrigated. Without that it's a quite barren, unattractive environment. Without enough water for just the population, tourism is unsustainable.

> It's a model that was built around a business class that doesn't want to listen to what needs to be done, and with a political class that serves that business class instead of serving all the citizens.

So, the usual root causes, greed and short-term thinking.