This section describes the environmental setting within which polar tourism now exists and environmental conditions and factors that will influence its future.  The Polar Regions are defined both geographically and politically, and changes in polar ecosystems resulting from both human-induced and natural events are briefly discussed.

The Geography of Polar Tourism

The geography of polar tourism extends beyond scientifically defined polar boundaries.  Several cities located near the edge of those boundaries provide vital transportation gateways to the Polar Regions at both ends of the world.  Tourist entry points surrounding the north, such as Vancouver and Winnipeg in Canada and many Scandinavian cities, provide key transportation linkages, hospitality infrastructure, and the incredibly diverse supplies and services needed to conduct tourism in the Arctic.  In the southern hemisphere gateway ports, such as Ushuaia (Argentina), Punta Arenas (Chile), Stanley (Falkland Islands/Malvinas), Cape Town (South Africa), Hobart (Australia) and Christchuch / Lyttelton (New Zealand)  serve a more critical role.  The Antarctic gateway ports are the main land based sources of tourist support facilities, services and supplies (Bertram, Muir and Stonehouse, 2007).

Environmental changes

Polar environments are experiencing significant, long-term changes caused by both human-induced and natural events converging on the regions.  Throughout the 19th and 20th century changes in polar environments resulted from economic exploitation at both ends of the world.  Irreversible environmental impacts resulting from this type of behavior are especially present throughout the Arctic. For example, entire species, such as the Stella’s Sea Cow, were exterminated by sealers, and vast watersheds were irreparably transformed in Alaska and the Yukon by massive dredging and hydraulic mining practices (Elliott, 1898; Wharton, 1972).  More recent examples include the leaving of relics from the Cold War in the Arctic, and from scientific and technological exploration in the Antarctic.  Against this backdrop is the appearance of tourism, which is an actual and a potential source of greater damage to Polar Regions.  Superimposed on all changes due to direct human intrusion, is the dramatic change in the climate, the consequences of which will clearly affect the future of polar tourism.

In summary, the two kinds of environmental changes impacting Polar Regions are: (1) those unequivocally induced by humans, exemplified by despoliation of animal and plant communities through extractive commercial activities, and (2) significant climatic changes most certainly caused by the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations (IPCC, 2007).  In planning for a sustainable future, both the public and private sectors need to evaluate the dynamic events described below and would be well-advised to fully consider the cumulative impacts. 

Changes due to human activities

Human intrusions and exploitation in Polar Regions have included:

• Use of Arctic resources by indigenous populations utilizing modern technology 
• Fur trapping for non-indigenous markets throughout the arctic tundra and subarctic forest regions;
• Whaling and sealing for oil, baleen and skins, including walrus hunting for ivory;
• Commercial fishing;
• Extraction of minerals, including ores and hydrocarbons; and
• Establishment of military and scientific stations.

Intrusions from the outside are a dominant characteristic of all of these forms of exploitation. Fur trapping for southern markets was the original motive for colonization of much of the Arctic. Commercial whaling, and to a lesser extend sealing, exploited the maritime ecosystems at both ends of the world, from which some stocks have never fully recovered. Commercial fishing, both controlled and clandestine, continues today. All of those endeavors have resulted in the collision of both economic systems and cultural values. Mineral extraction has so far been limited to the Arctic, being specifically proscribed in Antarctica under the Antarctic Treaty System. The Arctic has been affected by the presence of long-term military installations and the Antarctic numerous scientific stations, particularly during the second half of the 20th century.  The structures and contents of abandoned whaling and sealing stations, military and scientific stations, and caches of supplies scattered throughout the Polar Regions contain highly toxic environmental hazards that now present huge and costly environmental challenges (Snyder and Stonehouse, 2007).

No less damaging have been more recent forms of exploitation, particularly in the former Soviet Arctic.  The mass “movement” of millions of people to the Arctic during Stalin’s time to establish new mining towns, such as Norilsk, began one of the largest human induced changes the Arctic has experienced.  Equally significant, are the impacts resulting from the diversion of water resources.

Antarctica, the Southern Ocean and the sub-polar islands have also experienced economic exploitation, especially in regards to marine living resources and fisheries.  Terrestrial remnants of these activities are the whaling and sealing stations and camps located throughout the sub-polar islands and the Peninsula Region. Huts, depots, and the original supplies left by early explorers provide vivid and haunting reminders of their lives and deeds.  And, unfortunately, the discarded waste surrounding many scientific stations exhibit a time when environmental clean up was rarely a consideration.  A concerted effort is now underway at all scientific stations to remove debris and environmental contaminants. 

Changes due to climatic warming

The Arctic Council is a high-level, intergovernmental forum for cooperation, coordination, and interaction between the eight Arctic nations, indigenous communities, and other Arctic residents.  Along with its other activities, it also commissions reports on changing conditions within the Arctic region. In 2004 it published a comprehensive report on Arctic climate changes entitled the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA).  This publication supplies compelling evidence about the environmental changes occurring in the region and the rest of the world and in part is summarized below (ACIA, 2004 and http://www.acia.uaf.edu/). 

World-wide climatic warming is particularly intense in the Arctic, where mean temperatures have recently risen twice as fast as in the rest of the world. This trend is likely to accelerate during the current century, due to accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The Arctic also receives increased ultraviolet radiation, due to depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer. Warming is evidenced in widespread melting of glaciers, reductions in extent and persistence of sea ice, and of snow and ice cover on land, increasing precipitation, and shorter and warmer winters. Melting of land ice results in rises in global sea level, and may slow and alter oceanic circulation that carries tropical heat poleward. 

Likely consequences of warming in the Arctic, generally regarded as negative to the polar environment and its wildlife and human populations, include:

• Contraction of the region, manifest in poleward migration of the tree line, with consequent loss of tundra and diminution of cold polar waters;
• Flooding of parts of the tundra due to enhanced river-flow, drying-out of other parts, with consequent redistribution of tundra plants and animals, and possible invasions of competitive alien species and pathogens;
• Changes in coasts and coastal features, including increased erosion and loss of traditional terrestrial and inshore marine feeding grounds; 
• Retreating sea ice, with consequent environmental challenges to ice-dependent marine mammals (seals, polar bears) and cold-water stocks of whales, birds, fish and planktonic organisms;
• Challenges to indigenous human populations from flooding rivers and thawing permafrost, including disruption of buildings and communications;
• Loss of traditional hunting and fishing grounds on land, in rivers, on pack ice, and in the sea, on some or all of which indigenous human communities are at least part-dependent.
• Not all the changes are spread evenly throughout the Arctic: the report considers slightly differing scenarios sector by sector. 
• Overall it stresses that many of these changes are already detectable, and all will be considerable before the end of the 21st century. 

Since the ACIA, a crescendo of scientific evidence has been published that reinforces its findings.  The strongest and most persuasive evidence concerning an increasingly warmer world was published in February 2007 by the WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007).  This report not only confirms that global climate change is producing a warmer globe, but also gives reasons for its cause, and forecasts that warming will continue for centuries.
 
It is the IPCC’s forecast of future environmental conditions that should be of particular concern to those seeking to sustain the Polar Regions by managing tourism.  Scientific evidence reveals that environmental factors normally used to monitor ecological conditions are experiencing radical transformation.  Thus if we are to accurately attribute the impacts of tourism on polar environments then we must also be aware of the ways natural events are independently modifying those environments.   

Conclusion

This brief summary of the highly dynamic polar environments represents the setting within which tourism exists.  Continued alterations of the natural and human ecology of the regions will inevitably influence the polar tourism experience, the industry, and the success of sustainable management responses.  It is import to highlight the link between sustainable transportation and tourism in relation to global warming. Polar Regions as long-haul destinations from the primary outbound markets require extensive consumption of fossil fuels and result in high levels of carbon emissions.  Accurately discerning how tourism is affected by these processes, and how tourism itself affects change, is essential for understanding how the industry should be managed in the future.  With this need in mind, the role of tourism in the polar world is the subject of the next section of this publication.