The GlobalArctic MOOC introduces you the dynamics between global changes and changes in the Arctic. This course aims to highlight the effects of climate change in the Polar region. In turn, it will underline the impacts of a warmer Arctic on the planet Earth. For human civilization, the Arctic stands both as a laboratory and a warning for human kind. Besides, this course gives course followers an understanding of the key challenges and pathways to sustainable development in the Arctic region. This course is unique as it gathers several world’s experts for the first time to speak about the Arctic. Their respective inputs from different academic perspectives and disciplines offer a relevant and complete assessment of the Arctic region and its connection to the rest of the planet. At the end of the day, the course intends to offer in full scope the keys to understanding as the Arctic plays as a mirror of the human and geological dynamics.
Tourism
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Del curso dictado por École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Global Arctic
calificaciones
De la lección
WEEK 2 Arctic resources and the quest for them
In this second week, lecturers will expose various types of Arctic resources. Indeed, this week will highlight different resources exploited (fisheries, mining and so on) and the rush for new ones including tourism and O&G.
Conoce a los instructores
Matthias FingerProfessor
EPFL, ITPP, MIR, IGLUS Lab
Hello, my name is Edward Huijbens and I'm
a professor of tourism and geography at University of Akureyri in Iceland.
In this session I will speak about tourism in the Arctic,
both as part of the current Arctic economy and as the future resource of the area.
This module will focus on five points.
First, I will outline
some basic facts and figures about tourism development in the Arctic.
Second, I will talk about the factors determining the development of tourism.
Third, I will address who are
the potential winners and losers of tourism development in the Arctic.
Fourth, I would like to move the discussion on to
tourism resources framed at the idea of Arctic allures.
That I would like to tie with the research of
the International Polar Tourism Research Network (IPTRN) and lastly,
I want to address some of the challenges to sustainability of tourism in the Arctic.
When it comes to facts and figures
reliable and regionally compatible statistics on tourism development across the Arctic,
are hard to come by and even more difficult to compile.
In an article from 2011 in the Journal Polar Geography,
Ginny Fay and Anna Karlsdottir started give an overview of Arctic tourism indicators.
Therein the administrative regions of the Arctic can be
seen from Alaska via Canada and Greenland,
through Iceland, Norway, Lapland and Russia.
As it is also clear from their overview,
in order to understand tourism development,
you need a handle on inbound tourism.
That is how many visitors?
That is non-locals visit a region,
country or a place.
How to count them is challenging,
especially when there are multiple entry points and multiple means of entering.
Moreover, not all visitors are tourists.
A proxy to this inbound tourism can be a computation statistics.
That is; how many nights a person of
non-local origin spends at some particular accommodation provider.
That requires the accommodation providers to report on
this and that really depends on several factors.
Such as, the size and capacity of
the accommodation provider and the perceived severity of taxing in the region.
All the benefits of tourism accrue through those
visiting and the activities they undertake and the services they use.
My colleague Pat maher on a recent publication on tourism futures in the Arctic,
gives an idea of inbound tourism in the Arctic for the year 2015.
As can be seen from his table,
around 10 million people visited regions of the Arctic in 2015.
To compare and give you some idea,
that shear 25 million people went cruising
worldwide and over one billion people undertook cross-border travel.
Surveys of these visitors do not exist in
any compatible fashion nor a detailed breakdown of the origin for the Arctic.
Although it is safe to say that,
these are mostly people of
European and North American origin like most tourists worldwide.
Through the democratization of travel,
transport technology development and increasing accessibility,
some parts of the Arctic are witnessing
increasing inbound tourism like the figure from Iceland shows.
So as can be seen, the Arctic with its four million inhabitants has tourism.
But it is regionally differentiated and its growth is sporadic.
In some places it is growing very rapidly like in Iceland,
whilst in other places,
it isn't decline or stable.
Mere figures only tally inbound tourism and those staying on land.
That is another form of visitation to the Arctic.
One is that its growing in popularity and visibility
in public debate and that is cruising.
Cruise ships of growing sizes are penetrating ever deeper into the Arctic.
In 2016 with much fanfare,
history was made when the ship Crystal Serenity
passed through the Northwest passage with more than 1000 people on board.
The trip lasted 32 days and was repeated again in summer 2017.
Now, with much less fanfare,
Crystal Cruise has cancelled the route.
Quoted in the High note news, last December Johnstone,
Crystal Cruise Vice President of land programs said. And I quote."
In the future we are looking to offer guests
a more intimate experience in the arctic perhaps through our new expeditionship.
The world's first purpose-built polar code-compliant yacht
but nothing has been confirmed at this time."
Indeed in March, 2016 at
the annual 68th cruise global convention in Fort Lauderdale Florida,
the Crystal Cruise introduced
the first ever expedition mega yacht to sail with a polar class six designation.
In August, 2018, you might very well meet this 183 m long Cruise's vessel in the Ice,
North of Svalbard, eastern Greenland or in other places in the Arctic.
Wrapped up in the image of the cruise ship,
is one of the key factors determining the development of tourism anywhere.
and this is axis.
It is said that for tourism to develop,
you need three A's;
Accommodation, Attraction and Access.
Now, Cruise ships indeed get you there and thereby provide access.
They are themselves the accommodation provider.
The latter of course missing in many parts of the Arctic and
many cruise ship it is an attraction in itself and its on board amenities.
Regardless of the Cruise ship however,
providing access to some people,
aviation remains the key means to provide access to most parts of the Arctic.
In this image, I show the route network of Iceland here in yellow and how it links to
the route network of air Iceland connect in
blue which is building a network in Greenland and the North Atlantic.
Through interlinked aviation networks like these,
places like Ilulissat in Greenland,
are all of a sudden within the reach of people living in Tampa,
Florida or in Barcelona, Spain.
Now, if access is provided,
who is to gain from tourism?
Who are the winners so to speak?
My colleague Peter Miller provides an overview of
the challenges if one is to use tourism as a tool for regional development in the Arctic.
The Arctic is generally peripheral and geographically remote from source market.
It depends on imports from many of its supplies to cater to visitors and
information and innovation does not flow easily
through the sporadic communication networks of the Arctic.
Being remote and after under the auspices of
some central government capital city wafer the South,
many arctic communities lack political and economic control over decision making.
As an example providing access requires
infrastructure investment in airports or in Harper facilities.
The communities in the Arctic themselves cannot finance
such huge investment and state intervention becomes the norm.
Tourism and hospitality is a service-based industry.
It's a people's industry as it's often said.
Within the Arctic, populations are decreasing and aging and they are moving from
a resource-based economy such as fisheries or hunting and
gathering towards the dominant and globalized service-based economy.
This results in a distinct lack of human capital to cater to tourism due to out
migration and lack of skills from people predominantly
engaged with fishing or resource-based activities.
Then generally in the Arctic,
there is limited infrastructure to cater to tourism demand.
All of these present challenges and often
result in high levels of outside investment and influence,
leaving the winners of tourism development in the Arctic to be
outside of the region from the big hubs or capitals from south.
An example here could be Greenland where most of tourism services
are owned and operated by Danes or even Icelanders.
But the tourism asset of the Arctic is however place
bound and anyone living in the Arctic and able and
willing to create tourism products based on
the Arctic's high aesthetic value due to under-development can't be avoided.
Tourism operations in the Arctic capitalize on
the region's natural assets, landscapes and remoteness.
In addition to being remote,
biogeographic characteristics, extreme climatic conditions,
widespread perceptions of being a relatively inhospitable environment,
for its humans and the high marine biodiversity and productivity,
all accounts for the region's allures.
Tourists from across the world are attracted by the pristine characters,
and sparsely or non-populated
wilderness areas and the unique historical and cultural assets of the Arctic.
At the same time,
the Arctic is gradually more and more embroiled in
the geopolitics surrounding the region's energy resources and minerals.
This is oftentimes at odds with global conservation ambitions and when it comes to
the Arctic key qualities in terms of tourism they remain
relatively untouched by human activity and
for the most part can be regarded as wilderness areas.
Additionally, the Arctic is among the region in
the world where climate change is having the greatest environment impact.
Turning it into a focal point of the global environmental debate.
This creates a particular allure or for instance
last chance tourism to see polar bears or to see glaciers before it disappears.
Tourism development can be both seen as a contributor and a victim of
these development with potential implications for natural resource use,
ecosystems and peripheral communities.
But the understanding of these dynamics is only in its infancy.
Here is where the International Polar Tourism Research Network
(IPTRN) is coming into the story.
It's a research network created in 2006
focused on tourism and its intersection with environmental,
cultural and economic issues in polar regions,
both the Arctic and the Antarctic.
The network has held five community embedded workshop conferences
starting in 2008 in Montreal,
congri good wack in Canada,
the second in 2010 in Nabisco,
Sweden and the third 2012 in Nain,
Canada, and the forth into 2014 in Christchurch Akaroa in New Zealand.
From each of these events our publication is
available but this Emma Stewart and two others make clear,
the development of the polar tourism scholarly network is
documented through a social network analysis in their work and reveals
a highly fragmented scholarly community with the exception of
a tenth principle core group of researchers which would be the IPTRN.
The fifth conference of the IPTRN,
was held in river up Northeast Iceland in September 2016,
and explored how expectations towards
tourism development in peripheral areas can be managed to
contribute to the cultural well-being of
peripheral communities and or enhance the protection of the environment.
The next conference will be in Yukon,
Canada in June 2018,
exploring very much the same themes.
But exemplified in the themes of
the IPTRN conferences are ways to tackle issues of sustainability.
Although every policy document for regional development in
the Arctic packs tourism as a regional development option,
it is not so easy to make it happen for
the benefit of local populations and the environment.
I have named already the point on access and who controls the access is key.
But all access to the remote Arctic is however long haul and fossil fuel-based,
contributing directly to the climate change
transforming the world that people are so eager to see before it disappears;
that is the glaciers and polar bears of the Arctic for instance.
Suit particles from cruise ship heavy fuels
accelerate the melting of the ice caps and due to
poor infrastructure refuse and sewage treatment in
highly visited areas remain immense challenges in the Arctic.
But there are also other concerns.
For the commodification of indigenous cultures to
make them consumable and visitable so to speak,
a loss of identity and cultural sustainability becomes a concern.
With ownership of tourism enterprise generally and outside this hand,
the risk is great that
the economic and employment effect of tourism in the Arctic remain bound to
menial and low paid service jobs with
limited prospects of income or innovation for those involved.
In this sense the three pillars of sustainability all remain
formidable challenges to address in
the Arctic tourism context and not least the environmental one.
I thank you for your kind attention and I hope this has inspired you to
explore the issues surrounding the Arctic tourism and sustainability.
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