Wilderness In The Circumpolar North

Proceedings from the 5th World Wilderness Congress in Norway.

Nature has been a key attraction factor for tourism in the Nordic countries for decades. The demand for nature-based tourism has steadily grown and is one of the most rapidly expanding sectors within tourism across Europe and elsewhere. This demand has created opportunities for nature-based tourism to develop as an economic diversification tool within regions rich in natural amenities. But nature-based tourism is not only about tourism businesses and tourists visiting nature. The natural environment as a basis for tourism involves many challenges related to local communities, public access, nature protection and the management of natural resources. This book covers a broad set of topics in contemporary nature-based tourism from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Areas discussed are innovation, fishing rights and supply of angling, recreation experience preferences, national park attractions, the cultural clash between established outdoor recreational use and new tourism activities, the Right of Public Access as opportunity and obstacle, preferences of tourism landscapes, controversies around wilderness development, management of hiking trails, eco-tourism certification, and financing of recreational infrastructure. This book was published as a special issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism.

This book seeks to underscore the need for scientific approaches to first understanding and then managing tourist interactions with marine wildlife. It draws upon the work of leading natural and social scientists whose work serves the interests of sustainable wildlife-based marine tourism. Thus from within the natural science disciplines of marine biology, environmental science, behavioural ecology, conservation biology, and wildlife management come chapters that provide insights into the effects of human disturbance on marine wildlife, the impacts that tourists may have upon wild animals, and the management approaches to mitigating impacts that may in the long term be biologically significant. Equally from the social science disciplines of geography, sociology, management and social anthropology are drawn chapters that explore demand for marine wildlife experiences, the benefits that visitors derive from their experiences, ethical and legislative contexts, and management issues that arise when tourists interact with populations of wild animals in coastal and marine environments.

This book examines polar tourism in its environmental, economic and cultural settings and explores the potential for growth as well as essential management for sustainability. It has 17 chapters organized in 4 parts under the following headings: (i) tourism and the polar environment; (ii) economic roles of polar tourism; (iii) developments in Antarctic tourism; and (iv) managing the new realities. The book will appeal to researchers in tourism, ecology and environmental studies, and to those involved in developing sustainable polar tourism. It has a subject index.