The Significance of Polar Tourism

During the past two centuries tourism has grown to become the single largest human presence in many Arctic regions. Visitors to the Arctic now greatly exceed their host population at many popular destinations, and Arctic communities are increasingly reliant on the jobs, income, and business revenues tourism generates. The Russian Arctic and part of Canadian Arctic are the general exceptions to this picture. Many Native Peoples, particularly those recently attaining self-rule, view tourism as a more sustainable economic endeavor than their historically tenuous dependence on either subsistence or resource extraction economies.

In Antarctica, there has been a tremendous growth in tourism activities over the last decades. The number of ship-borne tourists increases by 344% in 13 years and land-based tourists by 917 % in 9 years. By the early 1990’s, the number of tourists in Antarctica eclipsed the number of scientists conducting research there.  Since then, the disparity between numbers of tourists and scientists has steadily increased. Today improving transport technologies, growing popularity, increasing wealth and leisure time, a moderating climate, and intensive tourism promotion are all contributing to the growth of tourism in the Polar Regions.

Given tourism’s prominence in both Polar Regions, and the expected likelihood that it will continue to grow and expand, residents, governments, and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) want to determine the vulnerability of the polar environment to tourism impacts, mitigate these impacts and design and implement appropriate management responses.  The success of management responses depends on their relevance to the environmental, cultural, economic, and jurisdictional conditions that uniquely characterize Polar Regions.  This publication briefly outlines those key features and describes tourism’s several roles and impacts in both the Arctic and Antarctica.  Based on knowledge of polar conditions and the ways in which polar tourism functions, good management practices must be selected for the purpose of conserving the environmental and cultural integrity (wherever applicable) of the Polar Regions. 

Unique Features of the Polar Regions

Polar Regions differ from warmer regions of the world in terms of their environmental, socio-cultural, economic, and jurisdictional characteristics.  These broad characteristics not only describe the setting within which polar tourism exists and impacts occur, but also define the opportunities and constraints for accomplishing sustainability.  These factors are introduced briefly here and more extensively discussed in Sections 2 and 3 of this publication.
 
The Environmental Setting

The Arctic and Antarctica are among the world’s coldest places containing most of the world’s ice and snow.  But these harsh features loosen their grip during their respective summers when temperatures climb, ice melts, immense populations of migrating wildlife arrive, daylight lasts virtually all day, and, in the Arctic, a profusion of plants bloom.  These extreme features are certainly not the world’s most popular tourist attractions, but growing numbers of visitors are touring and recreating in the polar environment.

Environmental conditions in both Polar Regions are extremely dynamic.  At certain, crucial times of the year locations throughout the Arctic and Antarctic provide critical habitat for a diversity of migrating land, bird, and marine species.  The survival of many of these species is entirely dependent upon the seasonal availability of food and nesting sites that only the Arctic and Antarctic biomes can provide.  And when the seasons change, many of those same zones can be nearly devoid of obvious life.  The environmental conditions of the polar seas and oceans experience similar radical changes.  In winter they are dominated by drifting and partly solid ice cover, but during summer seasons they can be relatively ice free and open (Stonehouse, 1989; Paine, 1997).

Arctic’s Native People.  The interaction of land and the water resources, the amount and extent of sea ice, and the quantity of fish migrating from the ocean to the rivers, have influenced subsistence hunting and fishing, travel, societal relationships, art, and ceremony of Arctic Natives for millennia. These unique environmental interdependencies and the cultural values and lifestyles they sustain must be equally considered when addressing the potential impacts of tourism in the polar world.

Two centuries of study have shown that polar environments, like those of the rest of the world, are constantly changing: and there is now substantial evidence that they are indeed changing faster due to human-induced causes (IPCC, 2007).  Significant climate induced environmental impacts and their relevance to polar tourism include:

• Reduced sea ice cover for longer periods of time is facilitating improved tourist access and extending visitor seasons.  
• The alteration of ecological zones is causing changes in wildlife habitat boundaries, migratory routes, and predator prey relationships that are in turn impacting tourist attractions such as wildlife viewing and sport fishing.  
• According to the 2007 report by WMO/UNEP’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the warming of the Polar Regions is anticipated to continue for centuries (WMO/UNEP IPCC, 2007).  One consequence of this conclusion is that the continued loss of sea ice will enable more ship-based tourists, to visit larger geographic areas for longer periods of time and thus more tools, techniques and regulations focusing on the sustainable development of the areas, will be required to manage tourism in the Polar Regions.

People in the Polar World

The extraordinarily diverse cultural and social settings of the Arctic region are also experiencing major changes.  The attainment of self-rule, growing commitments to preserve cultural integrity especially language, customs, and art, and the need to create sustainable economies are critical issues faced by Native Peoples of the Arctic.  Tourism impacts, both positive and negative, affect all those aspirations.  Arctic residents are well acquainted with the difficulty of balancing cultural and social norms with the need for a viable economy.  With the number of tourists now exceeding the population of rural settlements in some regions of the Arctic, the challenge of sustaining cultural values and ways of life competes with the need to provide jobs, income, and a market outlet for local goods and services.  Furthermore, the brevity of the polar tourist season applies added pressure.  In many instances an annual income must be earned in only a few months.

In sharp contrast with the Arctic, Antarctica has no traditional communities and no living cultures to sustain.  Heritage sites associated with the ‘Heroic Age’ of exploration receive sincere but sporadic attention from various national governments and conservation organizations.  Human inhabitants are to be found in many scientific stations scattered throughout the continent and its offshore islands, but these people do not have the mandate (and in addition, neither the inclination nor the resources) to engage with or manage tourists.  
 
Polar Economies – Many Actors and Many Agendas

When evaluating the impacts of polar tourism and crafting appropriate management responses, we recognize that other economic development interests are also at work.  The Arctic contains enormous quantities of natural resources, especially hydrocarbons, minerals, and marine living resources that create intense economic development pressures.  Economic enterprises with large-scale development agendas matched by huge capital expenditures are actively pursuing those resources.  In addition, global demand for food products keeps large-scale international commercial fishing fleets operating in both Arctic waters and the Southern Ocean.  Timber harvesting completes the list of largest industries seeking to acquire economic value from Arctic resources.  It is also acknowledged that all of these economic endeavors are supported by Arctic governments justifiably concerned about their economies. 

The Role of Sovereignty in Polar Regions

The Arctic is encircled by eight sovereign nations that govern the lands and offshore waters located within their jurisdictional boundaries.  They are also empowered to ratify international agreements that legitimize either allowable or prohibited uses of Arctic resources that extend across sovereign boundaries.  The eight nations include Canada, Denmark (including Greenland and the Faroe Islands), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and the United States.  In addition to these governments, Native People and Native Communities less formally, but no less effectively nor important, implement long held customs to manage territorial resources. All of these entities actively enforce their laws, regulations, treaties and customs, but they are severely restricted by scarce law enforcement resources spread thin across vast regions.

Like other aspects of the polar world, the Arctic’s jurisdictional setting has experienced substantial changes in the past few decades these contribute to the growth of polar tourism.  The most significant change occurred in 1991 when the Soviet Union was replaced by the Russian Federation.  Tourist entry to the single largest Arctic land mass not only became a reality, but an economic development objective.  The attainment of self-rule by the Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic; the Inuit’s creation of Home Rule in Greenland; enfranchisements secured by the Saami throughout Scandinavia; and the creation of Native Corporations in Alaska are enabling Native Peoples to regain more control of their resources.  But indigenous communities must also work towards sustainable local economies and this is also contributing to the growth of polar tourism.

In contrast to the Arctic, no State has internationally recognized sovereign rights over the Antarctica. States only can exercise jurisdiction over their nationals to a limited amount and the monitoring and enforcement of laws remains a challenge. At the time of the signing of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, tourism was non-existent in Antarctica and therefore was not given any specific attention in the Treaty. Subsequently, the first regulations dealing with tourism were adopted by the Antarctic Treaty in 1966 with the emergence of commercial tourism activities. The absence of sovereign authority and on site enforcement resources means that conventional rules and regulations cannot be easily applied to Antarctic tourism.  Instead, innovative approaches to environmental and heritage resource protection, monitoring, and visitor safety must be created to manage Antarctic tourism.

The Tourists – Increasing Access and Numbers

The invention of new transport technologies and personal motivations to visit new areas, have overwhelmingly demonstrated that no parts of the globe, including the Polar Regions, are beyond tourist access.  Greater personal wealth, educational attainment, and leisure time are fuelling increased demand for tourism.  These dynamics will be further accelerated by the retirement of the “baby boom” generation, the world’s largest and most wealthy demographic cohort.  

The Sustainability Challenge

Dynamic natural events and human forces now present in the Polar Regions are affecting the environmental conditions, social norms, cultural integrity, and economic structure of the polar world.  Within this unstable setting, tourism is also significantly producing change and exerting impacts.  Therefore, there is no doubt that polar tourism will affect the environmental quality, cultural integrity, economic structure, and governance of the Polar Regions.  It is also certain that tourism itself will be impacted by the natural and human-induced changes now occurring and anticipated to occur.  Evaluating the extent of those vulnerabilities and then applying appropriate responses in order to prevent negative impacts and conserve the environmental quality and cultural integrity of the Polar Regions is the sustainability challenge.

An appropriate response to that challenge requires the selection of conservation and sustainable development objectives that will protect the polar environment and its people. The identification of management techniques exemplified in good practices is necessary for accomplishing those objectives.  Based on years of work involving consultations with numerous stakeholders, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) have formulated 12 principles for the advancement of sustainable tourism (UNEP/UNWTO, 2005).  A full presentation of those principles is provided in Section 4 of this publication, but for introductory purposes, a summary of them reveals four distinct sustainable tourism objectives. 

• Conserving environmental quality
• Preserving cultural and social values by means of participatory decision-making
• Creating sustainable economies
• Ensuring positive visitor behavior, safety, and enjoyment

The order in which these objectives are listed does not imply any order of priority, as the UNEP/UNWTO publication states: “Each one is equally important.”  Management practices that are relevant to the unique conditions of the Polar Regions and designed to achieve those objectives are required to respond to the sustainability challenge.