ABSTRACT

Tourism and natural resources are rapidly changing in the Arctic. Human activities and climate change are transforming natural landscapes and affecting populations of wildlife, while remote Arctic destinations that were previously regarded as inaccessible and unattractive are being engulfed by the global increase in tourism. In parallel with these developments, the concept and practice of “sustainable tourism” is gaining weight. Connecting these two trends raises multiple questions, including how tourism affects natural resources in the Arctic and whether sustainable Arctic tourism is possible. We conduct a systematic review of scientific publications connecting tourism and natural resources in the Arctic in order to shed light on the environmental dimensions of sustainable tourism. Based on our review, we highlight the multidirectional relationship between tourism and natural resources, and we use southern Greenland as a concrete example of an Arctic destination to which we tie our discussion of “sustainable tourism” in both theory and practice. We conclude that framing sustainable tourism as a relative and comparative concept specific to the time, place and type of tourism activity, rather than as a set of general and ideal criteria, might be more applicable and meaningful in research and as a development strategy for tourism destinations.

摘要

北极的旅游业和自然资源正在迅速变化。人类活动和气候变化正在改变自然景观并影响野生动物种群，而以前被认为难以到达和缺乏吸引力的偏远北极目的地正被全球旅游业的增长所吞没。在这些发展的同时，“可持续旅游”的概念和实践越来越重要。将这两种趋势联系起来提出了多个问题，包括旅游业如何影响北极的自然资源以及可持续的北极旅游业是否可能。我们对连接北极旅游和自然资源的科学出版物进行系统审查，以阐明可持续旅游的环境维度。根据我们的审查，我们强调旅游业与自然资源之间的多向关系，我们将格陵兰南部作为北极目的地的具体例子，我们将在理论和实践中对“可持续旅游”的讨论联系起来。我们得出的结论是，将可持续旅游作为一个特定于时间、地点和旅游活动类型的相对和比较概念，而不是一套一般和理想的标准，在研究中可能更适用和更有意义，并且作为旅游发展战略目的地。